For the last year, this YACHT has been sailing around the world touching every continent possible. One week ago they were playing Bogotá, Colombia. Tomorrow they’ll be back in their home state rocking Eugene’s WOW Hall for University of Oregon student radio KWVA’s Birthday Bash. Another one week and one day, YACHT will set sail north through the Pacific Northwest to the Gorge to devastate the second day of Sasquatch on Sunday, May 30th.
Less than a week later they’ll be in Corvallis on Saturday, June 5th hanging at OSU for the Flat Tail Music Festival on campus playing a free gig with Neon Indian, Minus The Bear, I Will Be King, and Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band.
Bam! In July, it’s back to the Eurozone for some dates in Deutschland and elsewhere before rocking the Hollywood Bowl in California opening for the Chemical Brothers and Chromeo on August 29th.
Hot shit! Can you even wrap your mind around this?
They’ve been spreading their individualist ideologies around like wildflowers–sometimes in the form of scripture (like the interview below), but more frequently in the form of jump and bump dance music–all while staying “fascinated with the common ground of underground spirituality and underground music,” blogged Team YACHT just two days ago. “After all, both are motivated by the desire to create something more real, special, and rare than what is being presented by the mainstream cultural machine.”
Which YACHT offers to us as free release of their mixtape Disco Worship: Music for Meditative Dancing, a digital version of the sold-out tape edition that was released on the PDX tape-label Gnar Tapes and Shit.
“The music concert is a series of rituals just as the religious service is; we come together in the dark club, following a sequence of understood rules (hand-stamp, coat check, merch table, posture), and we hope to experience transcendence, to have synergistic and communal experience worth remembering.”
Traveling to spread their message, it’s just the lifestyle when you’re involved in YACHT.
The creative force behind Black Moth Super Rainbow may be moving on. After churning out a BMSR album according to a “formula” in 2009, Tobacco was not satisfied with the product simply declaring, “Eating Us is probably not my best work.”Everything that didn’t fit that formula, “and there was a lot that didn’t fit into that formula,” Tobacco put aside but let it live its own life, just for fun. Not intending to make a record, songs developed organically in the dark, grinding grit that is Tobacco’s signature fuzzed out, mucky crunch.
BIG hip-hop beats, sinisterly microwaved to meticulous perfection, this collection of BMSR rejects accidentally became Maniac Meat, the second “solo” album, well, his second under the name Tobacco–the antithesis to Eating Us. In the recesses of Tobacco’s core, his essence for pop remains–a sensibility that is damnably tantalizing to all ears it pricks. “Party music” is a deceiving term, but Tobacco’s new cuts are decidedly bright and walk with a swagger.
And who else to strut around the indie kingdom with but Beck? By fate or circumstance, he is the only guest on Maniac Meat...
It's just an excuse for slutty costumes and drunken lewdness. Why not make that debauchery a university sanctioned event with an on-campus concert?
As Halloween descends upon the University of Oregon, so does the best dance music of the Northwest: PDX new wave rockers Hockey in cahoots with hip Seattle electronica from Natalie Portman's Shaved Head on Friday, October 30th.
Prepare for waves of luxurious, bouncy beats from Hockey who will blaze through tracks from their debut album Mind Chaos released this month. Singer Ben Grubin dances with wild flair to synths and rapid drumbeats breathing energy across the stage and into dance-rock rhythms like "Too Fake" and "Song Away."
As noted in "Wanna Be Black," Hockey's been making dance music since 2002 when "we wanted to make music that people could have fun to at the parties we played," says Ben.
"We wanted to make dance music that was infectious," says bassist/artwork guru Jerm Reynolds. "Almost like: this is a band but it might as well be a DJ." Infectious it is, but Hockey is much more than a DJ with a combined live presence full of stamina and dance mojo.
Seducing synths sugared with handclaps spell Natalie Portman's Shaved Head with hipster lyrics and lo-fi, electro-beats. The co-eds will jiggle and wiggle to NPSH's salutes to side ponies ("Sophisticated Side Ponytail") and love for facial hair ("Beard Lust"). And I'm willing to bet the Halloween crowd will be sporting a few of the aforementioned epidermic trends.
Beware ladies!! Don't be bewitched by the shaking maracas and tambourines. NPSH was strictly formed to get chicks as they sing on "Iceage Babeland," "And if you wanna shack up after show / Girl, just let me know / I don't get star struck anymore." Take a ride on this broomstick if so enticed.
Come costumed and ready to get sweaty. There's nothing scary about dance music.
Trick or treats : Download Hockey's "Too Fake" and "Wanna Be Black" from their most recent tour sampler with Portugal. The Man.
Check out NPSH's "Me + Yr Daughter" here.
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Friday, October 30, 2009
Natalie Portman's Shaved Head
Hockey
Chilly Willy
University of Oregon EMU Ballroom : 1228 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403
Doors at 8 PM, show at 9 PM
Cost : FREE
All ages
Step into fall with our new collection of brilliant colors at the University of Oregon. This season welcomes the vibrant additions of burnt orange, foliage green, and toasted brown. Enjoy!
