Danbert Nobacon’s new protest album cannot resist toe-tapping. Resistance is the central message of Stardust to Darwinstuff, Danbert Nobacon’s newest full-length album, and it is so upbeat that you may forget you’re resisting the presidency of Donald Trump. The album is a protest, not just against Trump, but a whole generation of conservative, corporate globalist governments in …
Category Archives: Records
I’m Having Bertucci Tremors
Lea Bertucci’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air I lay awake at night listening to the scratchy strings of a post-post-modernist whose youth finds the profound in things that occupy physical space, and I’m worried that if I fall asleep then gremlins will come pouring out from beneath the bed. New York based talent …
THE PRIME SOUND OF LEE/HANNAFIN DUO
Portland improvisers Dr. Catherine Lee and Matt Hannafin’s self-released LP Five Shapes Five Shapes lulls the mind with its gentle spaciousness into a personal creative space. It is five improvisations of nameless shapes, making one whole prime number. In case you forgot, five cannot be divided by any other whole number (hence prime). Recorded live in …
LOTA’S ELECTRIC LANDSCAPE
Spooky electro artist Lota released the Amarantia EP last month on Pakapi Records The haunting introduction may lead you to believe that a droning synth-noise album is in store. As soon as you settle into that, the feeling changes. A beat drops and rhythms push out of that darkness. Psychoactive rain showers from sideways planes, …
The Chronology of Color
Qasim Naqvi’s musical response to the art of Pippo Lionni I received my copy of Chronology several months back. Composer Qasim Naqvi had asked me to review his forthcoming album before the experimental/electronic music label, New Amsterdam Records, picked it up for release on November 4. The first time I heard it, I wasn’t sure what to …
We Can Never Escape Our Sentience
Debut CD by Beau Brother I have to admit that I’ve been sort of under water and this release was mailed to me by Jordan Dykstra months ago. Life has a way of changing life, and sometimes you have to give in. When I finally uncovered the CD College Hotel, I wanted to get a …
Woken Up in a Dream
The sea, forest, stone and sky swirl together in green, pink, orange and blue, in Amanda McGlothlin’s cover art for the new EP entitled PWR.HAUS, by the band with the same name. Pine trees look like they’re being uprooted to sway and dance around in the mirage. It’s a trippy image, a recognizable landscape taking on the quality …
Stressing Strings Out
Stressings by Jordan Dykstra: How to make the viola cry. Sometimes we need to question the difference between beautiful and pretty. I’m not about to tackle such a lofty rhetorical exercise, but it should be safe to say that your concept of pretty, beautiful, is not mine, and not least Jordan Dykstra’s. He is a …
Live at the Alberta Street Pub
When Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble teamed up with songwriter Catherine Feeny and jazz drummer Chris Johnedis, one night at the Alberta Street Pub last November, they produced a great show and live recording. I imagine the set’s opening line, “I’m sorry” half-whispered by Feeny, from the song “Against You,” hooking the ears of everyone there, …