all-ages, electro-dance at superfest333 : a q/a with organizer manny reyes

Supernature, Portland’s longtime purveyors of underground electronic dance parties, is back with what’s become the group’s yearly all-ages effort. This summer’s Superfest333, on July 8th and 9th, marks the third consecutive year that organizer Manny Reyes and team have put together an all-ages dance fest, which moves into the notably larger Branx (rather than the upstairs Rotture where it has been held the past two summers alongside the winter edition, Superfresh, which is now in its second year).

Creating an all-ages dance fest was key for Reyes because “tons of kids used to come up to our monthly Supernature [party], especially when our bands Atole or Copy would play because we love and support all-ages shows.” But he continues that, ”Bars and music clubs tend to exist in Portland because of amazing bar sales, so I thought, ‘What if we had a bang out with tons of kids? But we’d make it so our 21+ friends would be interested and come as well.’”

In April 2009, Reyes put together his “dream line up” (which, for the record, was quite the electro-humdinger for PDXers and included performances from YACHT, Starfucker, Explode Into Colors, Nice Nice, Atole, Copy, Panther, Guidance Counselor, E*Rock, Mattress, and more) and approached Conrad Loebl of Rotture (and The Rude Dudes) with the idea.

“To this day he helps with booking and he makes sure paperwork is in so we can have an all-ages show and he schedules a staff of pros that help so much every time,” adds Reyes.

Other important counterparts include Supernature’s DJ E*Rock (Eric Mast also of Audio Dregs), who “always helps with amazing flyers and promo videos,” and DJ Copy (Marius Libman), who “usually DJs or plays in one of his many cool bands.”

Finally, Reyes thanks “Mike, the owner of Rotture, and the entire staff of Rotture, who fully support Superfest and Supernature–without them this kind of party wouldn’t be possible on such a cool, underground level. It’s definitely family vibes, pretty much everyone playing knows each other and are excited to play with each other.”

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pdxtc : a six-way split

“I was stoked on the idea from the get-go, but I’ve seen so many big group split-record projects just sputter out and never go anywhere,” says Devin Gallagher, the founder of Portland label High Scores and Records and the producer of PDXTC.

PDXTC is a six-way, 12-inch vinyl split featuring throbbing dance music from Portland’s diverse dance scene, which culminates in an all-ages record release dance party at Holocene on Thursday, May 27th. Only missing Jeffrey Jerusalem, five of the six PDXTC artists will be performing starting at 8 PM including Atole, Wampire, Guidance Counselor, May Ling, and Breakfast Mountain.

“This is the best comp of Portland dance music I’ve heard and does a good job of showing the diversity within a scene that outsiders might think is easy to peg,” continues Gallagher.

From Breakfast Mountain’s bombastic helter skelter to May Ling’s dank disco drama and Atole’s atomic punk bounce, the scene is definitely dance: Sometimes sampled, often synthed out, but always pushing forward with experimental electronics and employing an arsenal of instruments, it’s occasionally artsy yet intrinsically dance-y. Guidance Counselor is your medicine for writhing, carnal freakouts while Jeffrey Jerusalem’s electro-disco-boogie will make your booty bop and Wampire’s pop is incomplete without an unselfish clothes shedding routine.

There’s only one thing about these cohorts that is easy to peg: Getting dance floors sweaty is priority number one.

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q/a: atole brews up a free dance party at east end

Traditionalist may use masa with fruit or chocolate to make a steamy blend of atole. Others use video game explosions, post-punk basslines, and dancey drums to brew up a sweaty pot of Atole.

Others include PDX heretics Atole, a dance rock, disco mash-up of Italo electro beats and SFX wed to krautrock and decidedly punky exaltations. It’ll make you move.

The boys of Atole have many faces around Portland and love to smother this town with their dance joy, whether it’s at house parties, spinning DJ sets, hosting webisodes, or booking gigs and playing with friends at Rotture.

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keep the new year’s party alive at all ages superfresh w/ glass candy, atole, deelay ceelay, may ling and more

http://tinyurl.com/yfm3wzp