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"Sometimes—sometimes—it's great to come across a poster image that makes you unsure of just what exactly you're looking at. This photo collage by Dale Metteer is an excellent example, drawing you into its strange little world."
Footwork is a local trio comprised of Taylor Wingett (Secondary), Myke Pelly (Haunted Horses), and James Scheall (Wet Paint DMM, Half Gift). Their sound is—perhaps unsurprisingly—not unlike a weird, mutant hybrid of Haunted Horses’ grand guignol and Wet Paint DMM’s singularly clanging brutality. The bass and guitar shriek, stab, and throb with the distorted angularity of German Expressionism, and Pelly’s thunderous jungle drumming rolls and rattles throughout the band’s rapidly-shifting song structures with positively tidal force.
"High Wolf only did three pieces in 30 minutes (I greedily wanted at least three hours), but they filled the tiny space with strange radiances and rhythmic undulations. The whole thing—mesmerizing hand percussion loops, guttural utterances garbled into alien textures, wah-wah’d and flanged guitar humidity, and Chambers’ Univox and Juno-60 keyboard coloration—was made up on the spot by two guys who’d never met before. Though frustratingly short, the performance thoroughly entranced."
"J Green stood to his side, mic in hand, singing and doing dance moves seductive enough to move an art gallery full of stiff-limbed indie kids into hands-in-the-air revelry...
Forkner played keys, triggered the rhythm tracks, and manipulated J Green's vocals, adding delay or looping samples on the fly. At the set's peaks, he would send the songs into an almost-screaming psychedelic pitch, synths ping-ponging between speakers, noise and feedback and delay swelling ecstatically."
Half Gift is a new Seattle quartet featuring members of two beloved and defunct (or on-hiatus) DIY acts. The lineup includes James Schaell (Wet Paint DMM) on guitar and back-up vocals, Jessica James (Eel Eater) on drums, Samantha Pease on bass, and Maria Russell as the band’s lead vocalist. Half Gift’s drearily pretty sound is extremely Northwestern, with melancholic, chorus-lacquered guitar refrains repeating ad infinitum between ethereal, airy vocals and a locked-in rhythm section. The drumming is more varied and daring than Eel Eater’s was, and the guitar is less herky-jerky and more sentimental than Wet Paint DMM’s scalene squeaks and stabs. I predict lots of people will be smitten with their “In Gloom,” a song whose title winks towards Nirvana but which is musically more akin to a hybrid of the swirling broodiness of ‘80s dreampop and the Ronettes (the beat to “In Gloom” is only the latest in a long and storied history of variations on the indelible percussive pattern from “Be My Baby”).
Hausu is the project of Reed College undergrads in Portland, Oregon. They take their name from the surreal and exceptionally bizarre 1977 Japanese horror film by Nabuhiko Ôbayashi, though there’s nothing fearsome or shocking about their reverb-soaked sound (one is reminded more of Hausu’s lush “magic hour” backdrops and pervasive dreamlike haziness). Frontman Ben Funkhouser first rose to prominence with his basement-jammer/afro-punk band Herr Jazz, and other members hail from indie act Young Friends. Ben describes Hausu as a combination of Bruce Springsteen and Kate Bush, as performed by Orange Juice or Pavement. The youthful band was recently featured on KEXP’s “Music That Matters” podcast.
Seapony's version of twee has four-chord guitar progressions, catchy single-string hooks, breathy female singing and real-sounding drum machines.
"They've altered the twee canon so slightly, that they've made it new again," says Funkhouser of Seapony.
Wet Paint DMM // at Cairo \\ December 4th, 2010 Part 1 from joel leshefka on Vimeo.
"Tough to find a more vital Seattle album in 2010 than "Cold Jungle," which compiles tracks by guitar- and synthesizer-based acts who congregate at Cairo, the tiny Capitol Hill retail space that doubles as a silk-screening studio and triples as a performance venue.
The Cairo scene represented on "Cold Jungle" focuses on experimental music that prioritizes groove and mood over formal songwriting, and that's enough of a theme to make a cohesive album. The mood sure does swing, though."
Wall of Sound (Capitol Hill)
Sonic Boom (Ballard)
Mexican Summer CO-OP
EXPO 88 | M.Women live 10/22/10 from Myke Pelly on Vimeo.
EXPO 88 | Witch Gardens live 10/22/10 from Myke Pelly on Vimeo.
EXPO 88 | ASSS live 10/22/10 from Myke Pelly on Vimeo.
Mike from Run DMT & Tonstartssbandht from Joel leshefka on Vimeo.
