Portable Shrines

Friday at Cairo – get bombed by waves of cosmic bliss and synth-tazmic ecstasy vibes courtesy of Os Ovni (Austin, TX), Panabrite and Midday Veil.

(Panabrite has tons of cool jams you should check out on his bandcamp)

With oozing light pulsation emitted by Portable Shrines.       7 – 11 p.m. All Ages $5  Facebook invite HERE

PANABRITE – Octopus In Your Dreams from Camilla Padgitt-Coles on Vimeo.

Tuareg guitar phenomena Bombino comes all the way from the edge of the Sahara to Seattle December 11 at the Nectar.

From the Zero Gravity Films website-
“The Tuareg are an ancient Saharan nomadic tribe who, since the 12th century, have linked North Africa and West Africa, guiding their camel caravans across the desert, spreading art and music from Egypt to Mali. The Tuareg guard their independence and personal freedoms fiercely and have taken up arms against the government three times in the past two decades. They are also a very moderate and independent Muslim culture that cherishes the right to worship in their own way, as well as the rights of women. In fact, in Tuareg culture, the men cover their faces, the women do not.”

I would say let’s all take a moment to be thankful that our way of life is not being systematically decimated by christian missionaries, but it looks like those bastards are still fucking everything up. Hail Satan…

Praise the lord and pass the sacrificial carving knife.

Another great show at the Comet (Lesbian, La Otracina, Great Society Mind Destroyers, Hypatia Lake show the week before was incredible BTW)
Thanks to Mama Casserole and all the folks who support amazing touring bands like Chicago’s CAVE. Locals Are You a Cat?, Midday Veil and Kinski also tore it up for real.
Here’s a couple videos from the show featuring Portable Shrines light show by Aubrey Nehring and Rena Bussinger.

Peace to all.

A couple of weeks ago, we bid adieu to the Portable Shrines Magic Sound Theatre DJ night at the Living Room. It was sad to see it go, but we’re glad to have the extra time to work on other projects. Fortunately for Seattle music fans, a new night is poised to fill the bi-weekly psych-shaped hole in your soul.

Flier by Andrew Reichel

The brainchild of groove gurus DJs Explorateur (Valerie Calano) and Veins (Dave Segal of The Stranger), {{{¡DISTORTIONS!}}} promises to spotlight “REVELATORY PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC FROM EARTH AND BEYOND.”

Voracious appreciators of far-out music from all over the globe and from many eras, these two obsessives take pleasure in expanding minds with their (mostly) rare, obscure, and third-ear-puncturing records. (Explorateur and Veins—who are also residents at PROG!, a bimonthly event at Living Room dedicated to prog rock’s most exciting realms—would rather read the small print in insurance policy forms than DJ with MP3s.) Psychedelic music takes many strange forms, and these savvy DJs build their sets to showcase as many as they can squeeze into the space-time continuum before last call.

{{{¡DISTORTIONS!}}} debuts tonight, Thursday November 10, 9 pm-2am at The Living Room, 1355 East Olive in Capitol Hill, with special guest MIKE NIPPER of Emerald City Soul Club and Talcum. Facebook invite here. Stop by and say hi!

This Saturday 9/12 is  SHORT RUN Seattle’s first small press expo. An explosion of hand made media at the Vera Project in the afternoon followed by an art opening/after party at the fabulous Fantagraphics store in Georgetown (right next to Georgetown Records). Dig on it.

“Short Run is an event showcasing regional small press publications and individual makers of art books, zines, comics, literary works, and animation. It is an alternative to large-scale commercial conventions and will focus on alternative press, limited editions, and handmade books.”

This Friday 11/11/11 at the Comet a cosmic convergence bigger than Asteroid  2005 YU55. Four of the heaviest known bands on Earth lay waste to Seattle.

Lesbian, La Otracina (NYC), Great Society Mind Destroyers (Chicago) and Hypatia Lake (record release party!)

With the all-seeing DJ One Eye spinning vinyl revelatons between bands.

Get a preview of the new vinyl LP by Hypatia Lake HERE

When we first heard Cave‘s 2009 instrumental rock opus Psychic Psummer it was love at first listen, and we hoped that we would see them out in the Northwest sometime soon. Then last year, when they released Pure Moods, we were like, “man oh man! They HAVE to do a US tour now!”  No dice.

At long last,  on the heels of their new record Neverendless on Drag City, Cave are finally making their first ever Seattle appearance.

Neverendless is a distinctively balls-out foray into repetitive, rhythmic drone structures and sick krauty grooves. Drag City says it’s “roller-rinkin’ rock for the next generation,” whatever that means.  (All we know is, we fuckin WISH we knew about a roller rink that jammed Cave!)

Anyway, we’re pleased as punch to finally have that opportunity to host Cave in Seattle on Thursday, November 17 at the Comet Tavern, in a lineup that also includes veteran rocksters Kinski, psych shapeshifters Midday Veil and a rare performance from reclusive electro-noise darlings Are You A Cat?, plus sweaty cuts deep into the night from DJ Explorateur and visuals by Portable Shrines.

This is going to be a rager, kids.  Prepare accordingly.

Bird Dance by Virna Haffer

As most of the Northwest knows Tacoma has been turning itself around of late. Check out the Spaceworks Tacoma installations around the Theater District and take a walk around oldtown to fully grasp this rejuvenation of the artistic community. Then make sure to swing by The Tacoma Art Museum’s stunning exhibit of Virna Haffer’s Photography, Photograms and Woodcuts entitled A Turbulent Lens: The Photographic Art of Virna Haffer to ponder its very long experimental artistic legacy. Born in 1899 and raised in the anarchist community of Home, Washington Haffer began her career as a photographer in the 1920′s, continuing to create a prolific, internationally acclaimed body of work in many varied forms until the early 1970′s.

 If you cannot make it the show (it ends November 6th) the Tacoma Public Library houses an image archive of her work…

thee Oh Sees – QUADROSPAZZED from tab_ularasa on Vimeo.

Wednesday Oct. 19th is going be the last of the Portable Shrines DJ nights at the Living Room. Come down for one final evening of phantasmagorical synesthesia and audio visual incantations. We’ll be having some super special surprise guest DJs. 9pm til close. Find the hidden door…

THANKS to all the fine folks over the past year that have made this such a fun and far out night. Fear not, there will be more trips to be had in the imminent future. The all-seeing DJ One Eye will still be available to spin records at happenings, freak-outs and boogaloo parties across the globe. Just contact info(AT)portableshrines.com

North Seattle is the place to be this Saturday, Oct. 15, with two can’t-miss events in Wallingford and Fremont respectively.  Fortunately they are close (and cheap!) enough that this time you don’t have to choose between them…

The first is a special collaboration between Midday Veil and composer/throat singer Ken Ueno, who currently teaches music composition to the long-haireds down at UC Berkeley. With the help of local luminary Garek Druss on video, Ueno and Midday Veil will transform the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center (4649 Sunnyside Ave N) into a multimedia resonance chamber of improvised audiovisual delights.

Much more info about this one-of-a-kind performance here. Show starts at 8 pm sharp, is all ages, and although there is a $5-15 suggested donation at the door, ain’t nobody getting turned away from this one for lack of funds.

The other is the first of what will hopefully be many all-star DJ nights at Leary Records, now officially at home in its new location inside of 112 Printworks—home of Broken Press, who made those awesome silkscreen posters for Escalator III, as well as a handful of other exclusive collaborations with Portable Shrines artists Aubrey Nehring and Steve Quenell—making that spot at 112 N 36th officially thee freakiest storefront in all of Fremont.

In an era when the economy is in the shitter, record stores are closing their doors, and the corporate sinkhole of mass media still dominates the day, the emergence of a new shop dedicated to celebrating the eclecticism of the physical medium of recorded music inside of a business that has already established itself as a hub of artistic and social activity within the community is a very heartening thing.  Why not encourage it by joining them for a celebration?

Leary Records’ All Star DJ night is FREE, rages from 8 to 11 pm and features six local DJs/record weirdos (including our buddies Explorateur and Veins) spinning whatever they feel like. Expect anything from cosmic disco to psych, heavy soul to hip-hop, prog to punk to metal to jazz-funk.  Facebook invite here.

Here’s a bit more coverage from last week’s Escalator Fest III at Lo-Fi.
Thanks to Rena Bussinger for the video and images. More to come…

Soakin' up the vibes...

The tribal futurism of Swahili

This Blinding Light played a memorably transcendent improv heavy set.