Very much in love with this. The song (DJ Shadow featuring Little Dragon on "Scale It Back") and video concept (kudos to director/producers Ewan Jones Morris and Casey Raymond) are both brilliantly done, and now I'm watching on repeat.
Seems like the world can't get enough of the vocals of Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano lately so here's another treat: SBTRKT featuring Little Dragon on "Wildfire," a track that could easily be another LD single if not for the added post-dubstep sounds of South London.
If you look closely, you may recognize that these Montrealers (or if Québécois you're trying to sound fancy) have been around Portland. The husband and wife duo of Handsome Furs have a PDX connection in the form of director/actor (Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire) Scott Coffey, who directed the NSFW video for the single "What About Us," as well as the past Wolf Parade video "Yulia."
"What About Us" is sexually fueled and dark, full of despondent lust in hotel rooms, psychotic drivers, and voyeurs in the gloom spying frontal nudity from both genders. Coffey said, "It was all shot in Portland, Oregon in the cold and rain. But that’s good for nipple boners."
Maybe you'll recognize the MAX line, your room at the Palms, or the descending underbelly of the Fremont Bridge like a concrete maze above your head.
Plus get "Repatriated," the second single from Sound Kapital:
Last January, Oregon Music News curated the first-ever Portland Music Videos showcase, in conjunction with the Northwest Film Center’s Reel Music Festival 28, and for the 29th edition, we’re proud to have Portland director, photographer, musician and former bookerAlicia J. Rose selecting the clips.
Last year we gave the nod to Rose by showing her music video for Loch Lomond’s “Blue Lead Fences,” and in just the last eight months alone, Rose has released gorgeously intriguing videos for Portland locals like AgesandAges, Menomena, and Holcombe Waller, among others.
On Tuesday, October 11th at the Mission Theater, Rose, alongside Sara Lund, will show her selection of Portland Music Videos, a presentation dubbed That Was Then, This Is Now–the theme is “a hand-picked selection of vintage and current music video offerings created by a host of talented directors and animators who call Portland home,” and Then includes videos from Elliott Smith (Jem Cohen), Nirvana (Lance Bangs), and Sleater-Kinney (Miranda July), while Now selections include Menomena (Stefan Nadelman), Fleet Foxes (Sean Pecknold), Modest Mouse (Nando Costa), The Decemberists (Dennis Fitzgerald & Greg Brown), Death Cab For Cutie (Lance Bangs), Miracles Club (Judah Switzer), Sallie Ford (Matthew Ross), and many more as well as the world premiere Rose’s own video for Talkdemonic’s “City Sleep.” The complete line up of videos is listed at the end of this article.
Always a crowd-pleaser, watch Whitey McConnaughy’s selection for Red Fang’s “Wires” and read bassist Aaron Beam’s comments on creating the video:
Alicia J. Rose answered a few questions for OMN on her theme, process, and new music video.
Tell us about your theme–That Was Then, This Is Now–and why you chose it.
I wanted to curate a video program that encompassed the spirit of the past and the present. Creatives have been flourishing wildly in basements around Portland for years, making music and film that defies both budgetary and logical means. To me there’s a connection between the scene in the early ’90s and what’s going on today. A certain authenticity and heart of expression has driven a palpable evolution in both artistic arenas.
I moved to Portland in 1995 after stopping through on tour in the early ’90s. I found out about the scene from working at college radio and booking The Chameleon in the early ’90s in San Francisco. I was a giant fan of bands hailing from here–Hazel, Unwound, Elliott Smith, etc. There was something really special going on. All the bands I saw from Portland had a certain kind of earnest passion that I instantly connected to. The videos I chose for the Then part of my program represent an overview of the cream of the crop. The Now portion is a sampling of the incredible directorial and musical talent that has been emerging since the “SLR revolution” and the crazy interwebs. Now, there is a new ease and motivation to creating video work and Portland is ripe with juicy locations and skilled crewfolk. Just like bands can now make records with their computers, directors can now make videos with their regular cameras. Whoah.
What were the criteria?
With only a couple exceptions, I stuck to Portland bands and Portland directors. The Then program was ’90s based, and the Now program, I wanted to keep more current–2000-ish forward. There are two directors that have videos in both sections–Zak and Lance–and they still live and work here. But of course I made a few choices that had only one side covered…
Portland electro-dance-starters Starfucker (STRFKR) may have lost a longtime band member (Ryan Biornstad) and picked up a family-friendly letter mash, err, moniker since the release of their second, highly-anticipated album (Reptilians) in March, and now they've revealed their third video (see one and two here) from Reptilians for "Bury Us Alive." The Joshua Cox-directed cut is full of dreamlike visuals where some kind of out-of-body, psychedelic trip meets a space burial while a moss man's face flowers, and it's all concluded by bodies crumbling into carbon dust. Plus, there's four of them in the clip.
Freshly a trio, comprised of songwriter/producer Josh Hodges, bassist Shawn Glassford, and drummer Keil Corcoran, the band has shown no signs of slowing down as they've recently played for massive, West Coast festival audiences at both San Francisco's Outside Lands and Seattle's Bumbershoot with the addition of Ian Luxton and Patrick Morris (of Strength), both on keys, guitars and vocals, to their touring crew.
And the exciting ride continues for the local boys as the touring schedule soldiers on around the country, wrapping it all up in Portland on Wednesday, October 5th at the Wonder Ballroom with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Big Troubles, and their Mexican touring buddy Alexico. Expect them to play their newest song, "Dragon Queens" (below), from their recent Polyvinyl, 7-inch split with Champagne Champagne.
And other floating locales from Georgia (possibly Arabia Mountain?) to the Andes and Africa brought to you by director Jake Burghart for The Black Lips' third single from Arabia Mountain.
Even though it's all just plain silly, watch out for the Cole Alexander trampoline nip slip.
And if The Black Lips have taught us anything from when they incited Portland's Wonder crowd to bust down the barriers, you know you've made it when a girl up front is swangin' a dildo on a string like she's ropin' steers.
“People aren’t really good at describing their art,” says Into The Woods producer/director Jordan Kinley.
“Instead of asking musicians directly what inspires their music,” he continues, “we’ll show you what kind of fridge magnets they have or how they pay the bills or what tricks they’d like to show people or what they do when they are out of their comfort zone.”
This is the future of the music video. This is film making by Into The Woods–a team of webisodic video makers that focus on documenting Northwest music as it happens.
Into the Woods seeks to bring you live music, often with a behind-the-scenes vibe, from unexpected locations. Whether it’s inside Burgerville or from the actual living room (or kitchen or elsewhere, see below) of the musicians, the Into The Woods crew has captured more than 130 bands, musicians or artists on film and released more than 75 videos, all streaming for free on their website, in their first year of existence.
Through documentary-inspired recording sessions that hope to “capture the personality and community of Portland [and Northwest] music,” Into The Woods is here to entertain (recording music videos and live performances from home and afar), inform (telling the narratives behind the band, like following artists to their day jobs, or teaching with tutorials led by musicians), and disseminate this content worldwide.
They’ve even started to encourage you (local!) to get off your laptop and go see live music with their weekly Leave Your House PDX Show Guide. And the show they’d most like you to attend is at Holocene on Thursday, January 27th. It marks their first birthday.
One year into the project, Into The Woods has succeeded at “seeing bands on a more personal level” but they’re looking to expand. Up until now, everything–all cameras, recording equipment, computers, lighting, microphones, hard drives, and money–has been scraped together by team members. Along with celebrating their first anniversary, Into The Woods is currently raising money to purchase the items necessary to establish “a fully functional set-up that will allow us to take the operation anywhere, anytime, without limitation”–including a couple of generators, a portable PA and monitors, lighting, and mobile audio equipment and a new mixer.
This fundraising campaign also began with a trip into the woods. When the crew was shooting Hosannas in the Ape Cave at Mt. St. Helens, they were “inspired by the richness of the sounds in the cave” and “realized that we need to have access to this equipment at all times in order to re-create this moment with as many other musicians as possible. We had just come up with a financially sustainable way of accomplishing our original goal of going into the woods, while at the same time improving on that initial concept,” reads the Into The Woods Kickstarter page. “This session confirmed what we had been feeling since we started the site–if we had the gear to shoot anytime, anywhere, going into the woods would result in a much more genuine and intimate communal experience.”
A donation of $5 or more to their Kickstarter fund can get you advance entry to their Holocene party on January 27th, which features live performances by Tu Fawning, Skeletron (featuring members of Starfucker), And And And, Guantanamo Baywatch, and DJ Snakks (Zack from Breakfast Mountain), plus other donations will not go without rewards. You can score vinyl, CD packs, or “an afternoon playing Wall Ball with all 27 members of Typhoon.” Maybe those numbers are suited better for dodge ball?
With just under two weeks remaining on their Kickstarter limit, they are more than halfway to their $4,500 goal.
Although in the cable TV world it may seem that Jersey Shore killed the video star, bands continue to make music videos by the thousands, and Portland is no exception. With our loads of local artists, from the screen to strings (and other instruments), we have an environment ripe for music video making.
From shot-and-edited-in-a-day on whatever gear and budget the vocal and visual artists could cobble together to incredibly polished, professionally labored works, Oregon Music News has poured through the reels (and by reels we mean YouTube and Vimeo) and came up with a list of Portland Music Videos, which we will present at Mississippi Studios on Sunday, January 16th at 7 and 10pm. The first showing will include introductions and anecdotes from directors and artists while the second showing will feature several additional videos.
We bring to the theater a swath of videos that represent Portland’s diverse scene. There’s the Portland Cello Project’s delicate plucking and bowing set to an entomological marionette (below) contrasted by good ole PDX rock’n'roll from The Dandy Warhols, Viva Voce, The Thermals (in a video that features Portlandia star Carie Brownstein), and Blitzen Trapper. We have amazing songwriters’ stories married with film from folk-inspired, indie-pop collectives like Y La Bamba, Loch Lomond, and Nick Jaina. There is live footage and documentary-inspired live takes from Into The Woods bouncing off electro-dance makers Glass Candy (with their first-ever video after 11 years together!), YACHT, and Copy. And there’s even the Pink Martini contest winner from a filmmaking fan.
We strove to choose recent videos so most come from the last year or so but a few internet classics were too good to be skipped, like Red Fang’s “Prehistoric Dog” (below), and we also wanted to remember the late John Callahan’s ode to his “Portland Girl.”
From professionally obsessed to hastily improvised, we’re proud to show you 90 minutes of Portland’s best crafted music paired with finely tuned visuals on the big screen.
Ben Folds Five reunites to play "The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner"... on MySpace.
MySpace has always been the key to reuniting lost bands. Who else can they peer pressure into a reunion concert with fake friend requests to bolster their shattered egos and loads sex spam to revitalize their withered labidos? My top 3 choices:
1. Hammer... reunited with his parachute pants, gold jewelry, and fly back-up dancers. And disunited with faith and religion.
2. Some ABC-Dexy's Midnight Runners-Fine Young Cannibals-A Flock of Seagulls-Toto-Men At Work combination/super-group. Each could play one hit.
3. Falco, while technically not a reunion AND this would also require resurrection, just take a look below at Exhibit A, seen at Munich's Oktoberfest, to know how alive and well Falco truly is. Notice he's been keeping it real in the shadows of the bumper cars alongside other non-Austrian living and deceased rap/hip-hop/R&B greats like Brandy, Biggie, Puffy, Tupac, and of course Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz. Deja Vu, Uptown baby.
If you look closely, you may recognize that these Montrealers (or if Québécois you're trying to sound fancy) have been around Portland. The husband and wife duo of 
