spesus christ, live in church

A new electronica act with a cleverly celestial nome de guerre and a handful of digital tracks, Spesus Christ comes home... well, the Oakland/Portland-based trio returns to Portland from their other Bay Area locale for a "homecoming" show this Saturday at "what used to be the Funky Church on Tamarack (just north of Division)," according to producer/mixer Cameron Spies.

Filling out the bill are the seriously jamming, synth-pop duo Adventures! With Might, electro-ambient Soap Collectors (which also features Spesus Christ's Lizzy Ellison), stomach friendly folk from Leviticus Appleton, and mournful beatmasters Your Canvas.

Behind the moans and machines, Spesus Christ pulsates an unclassifiable twinkling and tapping of beats with steam of consciousness raps. Right Cameron?

"Our sound is a mixture of analog and electronic instrumentation. It includes elements of down tempo hip-hop, rock music, indie, and smatterings of about everything else we like listening to. It’s sort of problematic to try to describe our music using genre titles like we’ve just done, so I suggest that you just listen to our stuff."

Take the man's advice and download the simplistically titled yet multitudinously layered EP 1.

Evolving so rapidly, their concert poster can't even keep up with them--the $2 cover has been nixed, the show is donation-based. And gushing with new material, Cameron says, "We are planning to release an EP every month for the next six."

But until the first is mixed (possibly by next week!), Soap Collectors also celebrate a tape release but remind you that "Soap Collectors are people who gather together varieties of soap and compulsively log and organize them into neat piles."

Save me Spesus.

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Read this article on The Deli Portland.

q/a : a page from spesus christ’s multifaceted hymnal

Spesus Christ has three recorded, digital tracks–a release simply tagged EP 1. And then there’s those same three tracks Respeezed or remixed by three friends.

The Portland/Oakland trio of creators and producers may be new to the game but they’ve got a lot of material “gushing out,” so much that they don’t have enough time to record all of it, says producer/mixer Cameron Spies. And what they do have is being released on tape, a tangible, “personal” medium they prefer to CD or digital formats, and available only at live shows or by email request.

With a yearning for religious themes and voluminous moans in vacuous spaces, Spesus Christ shows compulsions for keys–synthesizers, organs, wurlitzers, and Rhodes pianos–and layered samples, guitars, basses, machines, and drums.

Haunting toy pianos connect with reverberating drum hits and diaphragm-shifting bass lines to produce a sluggish, dark genre mix. Vocals float from tinny pitches to grumbling grit in rambling, stream of consciousness raps, while the opening minute...

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Read the rest and hear the sounds on OMN.