Eight years into its existence, Northside Festival is determinedly future-minded. Dividing itself into thirds, the NYC festival has two- and three-day stretches dedicated to "innovation" and "content". The other third -- four days worth of music between the East River and Bushwick, pulls in choice marquee names and established artists...
With each passing year, Northside Festival ups the ante, taking over more northern Brooklyn venues and gaining more and more international recognition. Now in its 8th year, the festival added their Innovation track a few years back, which seems like a smart move considering that the tech industry conference economy...
2014 was an amazing time for music, and this year, rather than asking the Gina Altamura and Van Pham of the interdisciplinary Portland venue and nightclub Holocene to list their favorite up-and-coming Portland musicians, we decided to give them the opportunity to highlight their favorite shows of 2014, both local and international. The dynamic result is not exclusively Holocene-centric, and definitely gives ample nods to Portland's experimental music scene.
PHOTO: SZA @ Holocene, Courtesy of Red Bull Sound Select
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Too often, when we talk about music, we talk about it in declarative, categorical terms, as if we were ranking market positions and cataloging guitar solos. This way of thinking and talking about music completely negates the purpose of Grouper's music, and leads to a culture where only the brashest, hypiest, blaring-est musics get heard; the equivalent of everyone shouting to be heard at a dinner party.
Instead, Liz Harris' music invites you to lean in and listen closer.
With this year's Angels & Devils, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2008's London Zoo, Kevin Martin has resurrected one of his most beloved and influential projects, The Bug. London Zoo employed an arsenal of extreme bass weight, grime-y urban vocals, and abstract sci-fi electronic to reflect the paranoid, claustrophobic world of CCTV London, and the album caught the attention of the wider world at a time when the simulacrum of the internet and social media was really building a head of steam. This brought Kevin Martin's dystopian worldview to a wider audience than ever before, right in the midst of the dubstep explosion. While the rest of the world was busy subverting dubstep's militaristic potential into a formulaic commodity, The Bug sounded fresh, distinctive, weird, warped, and wonderful.
As electronic music has become increasingly codified and quantifiable in the mainstream, this placed Kevin Martin in a precarious position and raised the question: just how would he build the follow-up to London Zoo?
Grouper is a dark star of the Portland experimental scene. She hardly needs any introduction, but her records have hypnotized international audiences for years, yet she remains somewhat aloof from the local music scene. She DOES pop up, from time to time, making sporadic and memorable appearances, often times at small, inexpensive events. Saturday evening's performance was part of Reed College's Art Week; an early, free all-ages show in Reed College's Chapel.
March 9th, 2013 @ Reed College's Eliot Hall in Portland, OR
In no time at all, the Decibel Festival in Seattle has apparently become one of the premier all-things-electronic festivals in the nation. Most electronic music isn't really my bag; year in, year out, I know maybe one or two of the international acts that descend upon Seattle during Decibel Festival....