q/a : ‘detail-oriented, arty, computer, disco-pop’ with jeffrey jerusalem

After three and a half years in Portland, Jeffrey Jerusalem (Jeff Brodsky) has definitely made a name for himself as a one-man, disco-pop dance maker and show starter while garnering international exposure touring the world as part of YACHT’s fleshed out live band, The Straight Gaze.

He dropped his debut LP, Grimace, in 2009, and the glitched-out, standout track “Disco Dry Mouth” is a staple at every JJ performance–hear it below. Following up the electro-diversity of that debut, he released an eclectic disc of remixes, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, for which he approached (mostly) Portland artists, including May Ling, Reporter, Wampire, Guidance Counselor, Nurses, and Atole, and re-worked their tracks.

A drummer at heart, Jeff Brodsky has become the de facto man for the aforementioned YACHT and Bobby Birdman. But live, as Jeffrey Jerusalem, he’s still a solo performer and maker of “detail-oriented, arty, computer, disco-pop,” as Brodsky says. The last time OMN saw him live at Backspace, Jeffrey Jerusalem premiered some fresh tracks that navigated tropical waters, much in the same vein as the new Cut Copy album (due out on February 8th), with plenty of auxiliary percussion and humid electro-experimentalism–enough to transport you to somewhere warmer even if you weren’t sweating it up on the dance floor.

OMN caught up with Jeff Brodsky to learn more about the little-publicized, highly dance-worthy man and what’s happening in his future, including a new 7-inch and his second full-length LP coming this spring… plus a music video recorded entirely on his iPhone.

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audio-visual : ratatat's sold-out romp through the crystal

Like the rise of the laptop DJ, you might worry that two heavily produced, instrumental electronic rockers wielding guitars might get repetitive after a handful of songs on stage. Even actively listening to 40+ consecutive minutes of Ratatat’s instrumentation on album can get monotonous (if you’re not listening to one of their hyphy hip-hopped remix albums). But there’s a reason that Ratatat proclaims their genre is: “Visual / Visual / Visual.” They know how to adapt their instrumentation to the stage, whether or not you are on something chemical.

Selling out the Crystal Ballroom on Thursday night, a steady bongo drum rhythm between sets had the seriously antsy crowd clapping and stomping in preparation for the duo’s overdue appearance on stage. As glittering champagne-like starbursts bubbled on the blue projection screen, Evan Mast and Mike Stroud finally emerged and after a brief intro, the ballroom exploded. Ripping into reverberating riffs on the guitar and bass, Ratatat had the entire place immediately pogoing. Hunched, hair cascading over their faces, the twin silhouetted, long-sleeved duo ground through over an hour of wild instrumentation that captivated the dancing crowd.

With a row of colored Lite-Brite-like boxes stretching the length of the stage behind, flashing patterned X’s, and two clear plastic vertical screens flanking either side, Ratatat remained in the darkness letting the lights perform. Their latest album LP4 features a string quartet rather than their traditional Mellotron but playing strings live were their virtual avatars–hologram projections of themselves in garb out of Mozart’s closet, topped with powdered wigs, wearing sunglasses, and reading sheet music–synced with the samples. Water splashes, sparks and sparklers filled the screen as the fierce “Wildcat” flashed with every cat call (like the cover art to Classics), this white bird jived multiplied (like the cover art to LP4), and jungle scenes ranged from the tranquil “Mahalo” (here) to fireball explosions and infrared heat sensations with Predator Arnold on “Mirando.”

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q/a : on the yacht for a globe trot

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.

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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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yacht + the straight gaze kick off mystery moods tour

Portland came to worship in the church of YACHT under the banner of YACHT ideologies–whatever the significance of the existential, artistic or philosophical messages that YACHT espouses through their mission statements and ecclesiastical manifestos, these kids can be boiled down to one innate concept: They just wanna make you dance.

And dance along with you.

As Jona Bechtolt declared, Wednesday’s concert was less like a tour kickoff and more like a goodbye show, as the band prepares to march across the states and Canada over the next month and a half. But it was also a welcoming party for YACHT’s first-ever backing band, The Straight Gaze, featuring friends and performers Bobby Birdman and Jeffery Jerusalem.

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