Portable Shrines

The past few years have seen a resurgence of that antiquated and beloved media format, the cassette tape. This return to cassette is in part due to the zeitgeist of nostalgia that runs rampant in our culture and recycles hip about every 20 years or so. Many folks have been picking up on this return: designboom has a nice article about the art and culture of the cassette, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth edited Mix Tape: the Art of Cassette Culture in 2005. The November 08 Wire magazine contained a few articles about cassettes, notably about the mystique of Les Rallizes Dénudés cassettes and another on Black Metal’s cassette rituals. While preparing this post Portable Shrines synchronously stumbled into Flying Squirrel Pizza in Seattle, a pizza joint that loves mix tapes. So much in fact that they have created “The Flying Squirrel Pizza Mix Tape Challenge”…plus their pizza rocks.

The time is again now for those lovely little objects.

Also, in this resurgence something more is brewing, bands such as Wooden Shjips, Eternal Tapestry, and Du Hexen Hase are utilizing the cassette as a means of putting out new music. Labels are doing the same…Amateur Depression out of Florida is putting out some great stuff (Menthols and Nerve City among others). Anaheim based Burger Records is releasing kick ass albums on vinyl, cd and cassette tape and Best Kept Secret is an all tape label based out of Italy. I personally love having new releases in the format, there is something to the nostalgia…being able to pop a tape of something you have never heard before in your car stereo and just go…

So, having noticed this trend for a while I presented a couple of questions to some of these folks, asking what their reason were for using this format versus compact discs and if they thought this format will stick around as long as vinyl will… Read more…

Awakened by a frightening pounding in the night, this mysterious submission was found nailed to the door of P.S. H.Q.

I couldn’t reccomend this one highly enough. The limited ed. LP just came out on Notnotfun or get the CD from Language of Stone

This week in Seattle: Wednesday March 25th @the Comet an international meeting of the mind-melters: Samsara Blues Experiment (heavy vibes from Germany), Nudity (Olympian space lords), Treetarantula (Seattle free rock freeks) and Backward Masks (slop-edelic void cruisers)

Then on Saturday…

Another Portable Shrines evening of visual-sounds at the Josephine in Ballard. Check out three of Seattle’s most intriguing new bands:  Midday Veil (celestial hierophany), This Blinding Light (white light spacemen), the Gribbles (mysterious soundtracks by former members of the Invisible Eyes, Levitations and Hart & the Hurricane).   Phantasmagoric liquid light installation by Portable Shrines.

Not pictured: the fabulous and dreamy Meg Baird of Espers

Rags was a San Francisco street fashion magazine active 1970-1971…thanks go to collective member Mari for sending this gem our way…

2.26.09 Portable Shrines held a little freak out at the Blue Moon Tavern with Nice Smile, To Get Her Together (from portland,or) and Backward Masks…I was able to grab a couple of shots of the fabulously lo fi psych duo To Get Her Together…

portable shrines highly recommends that you check out the josephine…thursday…march 12…

kurt vile
meg baird
the dutchess and the duke

Saturday night Kath Bloom performed at the Fernwood Resort and Portable Shrines was there to check out the show and the explore the hippie mecca that is Big Sur. The show was delightful, full of good old fashioned folksy sing-a-longs and the Fernwood lived up to its reputation of a cozy haven for the psychedelically inclined.

This show was part of her first West Coast tour presented by (((folk YEAH!))) and naturalismo. Last year she put out Terror her first album of new material 24 years. And this year a tribute album is due out April 7th, Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute to the Songs of Kath Bloom, featuring Devendra Banhart, Bill Callahan, Josephine Foster, Meg Baird, Scout Niblett, and The Dirty Three’s Mick Turner among others.

This weekend the Akron/Family are spending three sold out evenings evenings shaking the Hemlock in San Francisco. Portable Shrines was granted the beatified pleasure of witnessing the opening night. Throughout this tour they are doing similar residencies at other venues in Los Angeles, Austin, Montreal, and Toronto. When I spoke with Seth Olinsky after the show he mentioned that the residency idea organically came together, there wasn’t a plan to do the tour this way, they just wanted to hangout in some favorite cities.
Their set was delayed slighted due to some technical issues, so audience members were asked to come up and tell some jokes (why did Beethoven get rid of all his chickens? They would only say “bach” “bach”) which broke that invisible barrier between band and audience. Akron/Family then proceeded to jam out for almost an hour, the audience dancing and singing and vibing on the sounds. In an interview with Seth Naturalismo has referred to their shows as communal and I will have to agree that both times I have seen them everyone is involved in the show, the boundaries are joyously torn down.

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These two Northwest artist/musicians seem to express the inherent visual and multi-dimensional aspects of music and sound in two dimensional works on paper and canvas. Or maybe its just me. Stop by Some Space on thursday for the opening and ceremonial beer tasting.
625 Ist Ave at Cherry St Seattle, WA 98104

tripping psychedelica…


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Hystiophryne Psychedelica