Tons of great tapes coming out these days but this one has been tickling all the right nodes of late. The mysterious MORGAN DELT of Topanga Canyon paints a beautiful technicolor nightmare reminiscent of the dark UK psych pop of Kaleidoscope and July or the ethereal freak outs of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Haunted Floydian vocals and time-expanding harpsichord vortexes melted over some very groovy bass lines. Strangely shifting song structures feel like a trip through a teetering funhouse ride. Nobody else is doing it like this these days, that’s for sure.
You can and should order the tape and preview it HERE.
Come get even more Distorted this Wednesday 11/28 during the Lunar Full Moon Eclipse! It’s the 2nd installment of the bi-monthly {{DISTORTIONS}} Psych DJ Night at the LoFi. Resident DJs Explorateur and Veins have been burning up the decks lately with some of the most finely curated and far-out sounds you are likely to hear on this backwoods planet. Alien soundtracks, acid rock, psych funk, vintage electronic futurism and uncategorizable delights will pass through your ear holes all night. This time they will be joined by DJ One Eye of Portable Shrines (who used to bring you ye olde Wednesday night freak-outs at The Living Room). One Eye’s Portable Shrines Light Show will be in full effect as well so prepare to have your orbs dazzled by synergistic 4-D light mandalas.
9:00PM-2:00AM 21+ The LoFi 429 Eastlake Ave East, Seattle
Prepare to be turned on. This Wednesday space truckers Explorateur and Veins begin a new bimonthly edition of their excellent DISTORTIONS psych DJ outfit at the Lo-Fi. Expect a sonic journey into parts unknown.
With a live set by local space-gazers Jetman Jet Team.
When I heard that the Funhouse was closing I knew we had to do one last show there. It’s always been one of my favorite spots in Seattle and many of the most memorable Portable Shrines events went down there (Psychic Ills, Indian Jewelry, Blues Control, Little Claw, Kinski, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Moon Duo, Young Prisms, Davila 666, Barn Owl etc.) While the future of Seattle’s favorite stinky punk dive remains unclear we do know that the Funhouse as we know it will be closing it’s doors in October. Join us for one last portable shrines style freak-out at ye olde Funhouse this Saturday September 29th with a sampling of a few of the finest in the current crop of Northwest noise-
Thrill Jockey recording artists Eternal Tapestry have been keeping the torch of cosmiche music burning for many a year to much acclaim and have possibly played more PS events than any other band. For all the kids who have been getting their minds blown of late by Parson Sound, Faust and Amon Duul II, come experience the modern day equivalent of the Kraut rock and Swedish drone sounds of the 70′s.
Terminal Fuzz Terror is the subtle moniker of the latest and most probably greatest project yet spearheaded by Darwin Rodriguez, artiste and eardrum shredder in such past musical combos as Ayahuasca Travelers and Treetarantula. Better then a Davy Allen record left out in the sun. Seriously killer shit.
Kicking off the night right, Baby Guns will take you down a dark swirling tunnel of ultraviolet nightmares you are sure to enjoy. Heavy, trippy gothed-out acid punk vibes to seduce the innocent. Don’t miss one of the best new bands in Seattle.
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
This Saturday April 2nd we celebrate the release of our super deluxe double LP extravaganza of mind boggling sounds from beyond. An amazing 6 of the 18 bands featured on the album will be performing at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery 429 Eastlake. I daresay one of the finest lineups we’ve had the pleasure to present. These are exact times so don’t miss out!
Spinning the finest zonked out gems all night in the lounge will be DJs Valerie”Explorateur”Calano, Dull Knife’s Adam Svenson and Garek Druss and the all-seeing DJ Eye. Projections by Aubrey Nehring, Darlene Nordyke, David Golightly and Ellie Dicola.
The record wont be in stores til Record Store Day April 16th so come down and score a copy now, along with some other very limited edition treats.
Last Thursday night, The Comet Tavern was packed to the gills for one of the month’s most anticipated local psych shows. Openers Wah Wah Exit Wound delivered a heavy dose of shreddy prog, and Hypatia Lake played some delightfully Sabbathy cuts from their upcoming album, while DJ Veins and DJ Gel-Sol kept the energy high between sets.
Next up was Portland’s Datura Blues, which seems like an entirely different band every time I see them. Once they wore cowboy hats and played a set of countryfied jam rock, complete with an adept fiddler. Another time they riffed on Faust’s Picnic on a Frozen River for some 15 minutes. Their set at the Comet the other night skirted into jazz fusion territory, with a baritone sax and two drummers.
Midday Veil ended the night, playing a set of mostly new material including a cover of Broadcast’s Pendulum and a number of songs destined for the band’s second studio album. The general consensus was that MV groove quite a bit harder these days, what with the recent addition of Jayson Kochan (solo project: Airport) on bass guitar to the lineup. Here’s a video of MV’s debut performance of “Pavamana”…
This Monday night 11/8 at the Comet: Masaki Batoh of Japanese avant-rock legends Ghost brings his Falling Spectre tour to Seattle along with the mighty sound sorcerer known asJabonand those travelers of the void Tiny Light. DJ Veins will bring the vinyl.
Batoh and Jabon will continue the tour together down the coast:
11/9/10 Mississippi Studios Portland OR w/ Jabon
11/10/10 The Storm Ship Arcata CA w/ Jabon
11/11/10 The Vortex Room San Francisco CA w/ The Young Elders
11/12/10 Ghost Town Gallery Oakland CA w/ Sic Alps
11/13/10 Pappy and Harriets Pioneertown Palace Pioneertown CA w/ White Magic (solo)
11/14/10 Spaceland Los Angeles CA w/ White Magic (solo) and Young Elders
A&R guys take note:since their performances at last year’s inaugural Portable Shrines Escalator Fest, Portland’s Eternal Tapestry signed to Thrill Jockey Records, Brooklyn’s Prince Rama signed to Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label, and Bay Area-based Lumerians signed to Knitting Factory Records. So if you’re wondering which underground psych acts are on the edge of breaking out this year, you might be well advised to take a gander at our lineup for Escalator II…
Kicking off Night 1 of this year’s fest are trance-rock shamans This Blinding Light. Inspired by magick, alchemy, and finding a surprisingly vast number of ways to use two chords to unite heaven and earth, This Blinding Light have quickly risen to prominence within Seattle’s underground psych scene over the past couple years. TBL’s ritualistic jams are the perfect way to leave the earth behind, so make sure you get there in time to achieve proper liftoff.
This Blinding Light. Photo by Kelly O for The Stranger
Next up is Topanga, CA’s Jeffertitti’s Nile, whose music has been described as a “hypnotic river of sound” that transports the listener to “timeless dimensions.” Believe the hype. As soon as we saw this video for S L E E P T O N I G H T, we knew we had to get these guys to Seattle.
Jeffertitti’s Nile will be a tough act to follow, but if anyone can be confidently trusted with that task, it’s Seattle’s Night Beats. Coming off a spring and summer of almost nonstop touring that included a performance at Austin Psych Fest as well as a number of other notable bills, plus a scorching 7″ on Chicago’s Trouble in Mind Records, Night Beats will bring it all back home with a set of dirty, drunken old-school psych. Bring your dancing shoes.
Next up is Fullerton, CA’s Dahga Bloom, who have been touring like crazy on the west coast this fall despite having a van’s worth of gear stolen on Sept. 30th. (For a full list of the gear they’re missing, check their MySpace.) Dahga Bloom’s debut studio LP fuses a stoney desert sensibility with krautrock rhythms and fragments of long lost carnival jams, perfect for carrying you into the evening’s climax.
Closing out the night will be Seattle’s Blood Red Dancers, who have been described by at least one concertgoer as “like The Doors, except good.” Now, I like The Doors as much as the next head, but I gotta admit, that’s a pretty apt comparison. It’s all about the Manzarek-esque organ, maaan, which tempers BRD’s balls-out rock-and-roll and gritty Tom Waitsish vocals with a loungey vibe that makes you feel like maybe you were knocked out in a beer brawl in 1972 and you’re just now coming to.
Saturday night promises a lineup of non-stop massive jams and epic drones, beginning with a “special transcontinental experience” with your friendly neighborhood experimental sound gurus Climax Golden Twins. Expect the unexpected.
Next up is the first Seattle appearance by Edibles, Portland’s new “kosmische dub” project featuring Dewey Mahood from Eternal Tapestry. Since issuing two extremely limited cassettes this year on Not Not Fun and Stunned Records, Edibles have built a cult following for their dank, sun-soaked jams. Be the first on your block to know why!
Third on the evening’s agenda is a set of supreme grooves and glorious climaxes from Seattle’s shapeshifting psychonauts Midday Veil, hand-selected to send you “tumbling endorphin over endorphin into higher consciousness,” as The Stranger’s Dave Segal wrote in a recent review of the video Dumb Eyes directed for MV’s Asymptote II. Rumor has it that the band will be in possession of advance copies of Eyes All Around, their debut studio full-length on the new Shrines-affiliated Translinguistic Other imprint (which you’ll be hearing a lot more about very soon…)
Are you exhausted yet? Stay with us, because next up is Moon Duo, the side-project-turned-center-project of Wooden Shjips frontman (and perennial Shrines favorite) Erik “Ripley” Johnson and his partner Sanae Yamada. Fresh from a year of US and European touring and wielding a widely heralded full-length on Woodsist, Moon Duo promises to deliver a dronerific set of motorik grooves and synth ecstacy laced with hypnotic guitar washes and spaced out vocals.
Closing out the weekend’s festivities are local faves The Curious Mystery, who “blend Sixties-style psychedelia with American country-blues and garage experimentalism” to gorgeous, dreamy ends to help you come down easy. If you listen closely, you might hear some fresh new tracks from We Creeling, The Mystery’s upcoming follow-up to 2009′s Rotting Slowly on K Records.
On top of the bands, there will be DJs in the lounge both nights (DJs Mamma Casserole and Papa Yod, DJ Mood Organ, Darwin Rodriguez, Clarita Hinojosa, Jermaine Blair and Garek Druss), plus phantasmagoric projections from Portable Shrines, Dumb Eyes, Darlene Nordyke, Ellie DiCola and David Golightly. What more could you possibly want in a party?! Advance passes to Escalator are a recession-friendly $18 (cover will be $12 each night at the door). Get yours now via escalatorfest.com.
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…
The Collective is quite excited about The Black Angels’ second psych fest Friday March 13th through Sunday March 15th in psychedelia’s womb, Austin Texas. We will have the ever psychotropic Vic Fox reporting for us and taking some far out photos…those of us up in Seattle lament not being able to get down south for the trip but Vic will let us live vicariously through her this year. Rumors of a Spindrift interview and some watering hole shenanigans are floating around…we can’t wait to see what goes down.
More information about the fest is available when you click the photo….
This week BrightBlack Morning Light leave their solar powered dwelling in northern New Mexico and begin a brief west coast tour. They are supporting their bluesy drugged-out drone “Motion to Rejoin” 2008 release.
While reading Arthur Magazine’s recent interview with Nabob Shineywater and Rabob Hughes I was particularly struck by Nabob’s concern for today’s youth….after he lamented that he “hoped the Dirty Three would be the next Grateful Dead” he goes on to elaborate about mainstream festivals and youth who attend them…
“I worry about kids today. Who is there to show them the way? There are no great public places left to host the parking lot scenes that [the Grateful Dead] used to have. Cops would bust that up now. Homeland Security? They point it back on the people. I hear at some festivals now, not only do they have pot dogs, but they also tax you on the street value of the pot you’re carrying. Where will positive group references for psychedelics be? A lot of music festivals combine positive bands with bands that express a lot of hate. You don’t want psychedelics in that environment, and kids have the drugs either place. Where will kids meet leaders in a public place? This isn’t going to happen online, or by looking at iconic posters in a music store.”
So grab your crystals, pack your bowl with some sativa or chew a few shrooms and check them out…just maybe we can find in BrightBlack Morning Light what Nabob had hoped for in the Dirty Three…
Tour Dates:
01/05 Kennewick, WA @ Red Room w/Daniel Higgs
01/06 Olympia, WA @ Big Room w/Daniel Higgs
01/08 Seattle, WA @ Vera Project w/Daniel Higgs
01/09 Portland, OR @ Holocene w/Daniel Higgs
01/10 Eugene, OR @ Sam Bonds Garage w/Daniel Higgs
01/12 Arcata, CA @ Humboldt Brews w/Daniel Higgs
01/14 San Francisco, CA @ The Independent w/Glasser
01/16 Santa Cruz, CA @ Historic Brookdale Lodge w/Glasser
This one’s been out for a bit but few seem to have acknowledged the magnitude of this bomber. The same can be said about most of the mind-boggling achievements of music legend Greg Shaw(1949-2004), the visionary mind behind Bomp! Records and the magazine of the same name. Sci-fi/rocknroll writer and former Deviant Mick Farren teamed up with Suzy Shaw (Greg’s lifelong co-conspirator) and compiled an amazing tribute to his life’s work. The book reprints (mostly for the first time anywhere) an enormous amount of classic material from the now rare and coveted Bomp magazine, even going back to his days editing one of the first ever underground music papers Mojo-Navigator in the midst of the late sixties San Francisco scene. Included for the first time ever is the fabled lost/final issue from 1981 wherein Shaw seems to be proclaiming the end of the punk era and a return to the primeval energy of psychedelic rock (much as he had predicted the rise of the 70′s punk explosion, once again way ahead of most).
To sum up: more than just drool inducing design (tons of rare and unseen photos and graphics) this big book of Bomp was decades in the making and one that you’ll keep returning to, finding more each time.
Its an awe-inspiring look into a era when people sent letters in the mail, did paste-ups and made mimeograph fanzines and wrote with primitive machines called typewriters. Oh yeah, and played real rock and roll from deep inside their guts.
The Portable Shrines collective was blessed to witness Ya Ho Wha 13′s performance at the Nectar Lounge in Seattle 12.15.08, Emeralds opening, and at the Doug Fir Lounge 12.16.08, Eternal Tapestry bringing forth Spirit first. The trio also played at Slim’s down in SF 12.18.08, with the Holy Wooden Shjips opening, and in LA 12.19.08 at the fitting Spaceland with the Moon Upstairs and the drone duo Robedoor setting the mood. There have been no reports of the two cali shows, and we are anxiously awaiting accounts from our southern brothers and sisters. Portable Shrines deeply wanted to follow Ya Ho Wha 13 down the coast but alas, the maya swallowed us and we need to make a living. If only the Source Family could take us into the fold and put us to work at the restaurant, but sadly those days are over.
Opening with the Star Exercise and following through with a hypnotic set Ya Ho Wha 13 held rapt the audience that came to check them out. There seemed to be a strange effect on women, both shows attended had seductively dancing ladies at the front of the stage…the charismatic spirit of Father Yod was present and effecting all. At the Seattle show this member of Portable Shrines had a moment of entrancement focused upon the crash cymbal of Octavius Aquarian, truly mind blowing. Before the Seattle gig the trio became lost on the streets and missed sound check, and the sound did seem a bit uneven. Nevertheless the show was rapturous. The Portland show was just as amazing, the sound richer at the Doug Fir with the more organic setting and a better mix. The band seemed more relaxed and flowed with the jams a bit more, bringing the attending collective again into a meditative state.
