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NW Female MCs, Sirens Echo, Drop Skillz I've been picking my brain for days trying to figure out who Sirens Echo remind me of. The Portland female hip hop duo of Syndell and Toni Hill lay down raps, soulful melodies and spoken word tirades with crisp, calculated and seductive precision.
They're so good at what they do comparing their lyrical prowess to a male MC's in hopes of qualifying their gender and ability is pointless. Their confidence and skill as MCs, as well as the circles they run in (both hold memberships with the Oldominion crew) testify to their greatness. Their production team, which includes Northwest beat makers Pale Soul, Mr. Hill, Mako and The Chosen, mold a very distinct, clean sound unencumbered by the intentional lo-fi rasp that weighs down a lot of underground hip hop acts. That's not to say that the music of Sirens Echo is uplifting or fluffy. Put simply, female MCs at large don't really buy into a lot of the gender roles and dynamics you see played out in a lot of popular music, and Sirens Echo is no exception. As I continued to plow through their new album, Psalms of the Siren, for the sixth or seventh time, I realized the amalgamation of sound my musical memory was trying to scratch at. First the combined sound, or aesthetic of San Francisco's Naked Music artists came to mind. In terms of the downtempo, broken beat side of things they definitely share that chic, soulful, jazzy sound. And where Naked Music lacks serious lyrical content, Sirens Echo attacks and conquers. But that still wasn't close enough. Then I remembered the Austrian nu-jazz collective Jazzanova and their remix of Ursula Rucker's "Circe." Syndell and Hill's vocals, especially on songs such as "And All My…" and "Big City" reminded me of Rucker's strong yet sensual lyrical persona. At the same time, on songs such as "Gone Be With You," Syndell and Hill get grimy enough to throw down with the hardest of MCs. Sirens Echo perform with Cool Nutz, Maniac Lok, Michael K. and DJ Chill at John Henry's, 10 pm Friday, March 4. $5. — Steven Sawada
Something Bigger, Something Brighter Pretty Girls Make Graves' first full-length release, Good Health, began with a rallying cry: "Do you remember when the music meant something?" It was clear from the start this wasn't another tired release packed with ironic detachment, but something different, more intense and heartfelt. The album had a few bumps, but overall it felt like what it was: the sound of five established musicians melding all their best ideas into song.
Last year, Pretty Girls Make Graves released The New Romance, and where Good Health was good, this second album is fantastic. It's all bent angles and zagging lines, fiery packets of sound tied together by Andrea Zollo's remarkable voice, which ricochets around the space between Neko Case's clear, soulful tone and The Distillers' Brody Dalle's insolent pack-a-day growl. The boys in the band (guitarist/sample master Jay Clark, drummer Nick Dewitt, guitarist Nathan Thelen and bassist Derek Fudesco, formerly of Murder City Devils) lend their voices to nearly every song as well, roughing up the background for Zollo here, taking the lead there. They sneak samples and synth sounds in with the customary rock instrumentation, and they pack more snippets of melody into each song than many bands deliver over the course of an entire album. What results is angular, semi-arty punk music you can dance to; it also makes for an energetic, impassioned live show. Pretty Girls Make Graves perform with dios malos and Testface at 8:30 pm Wednesday, March 9 at the WOW Hall. $10. — Molly Templeton
KRS-One Drops Some Knowledge KRS-One is not hip hop's messiah here to deliver us from the jiggy/bling hollowness of commercial hip hop or the whack, elitist bullshit of too-underground dictionary rap. He is our teacher. Hip hop's "Teacha."
And with hip hop culture and rap music breaching geographic boundaries, influencing so much of corporate America's marketing and development (you can't tell me Motorola wasn't thinking rap when they created the Sidekick), and dominating, no, slaying global music sales, it may be time to step back, take a deep breath and listen to the Teacha preach for just a minute. The Brooklyn-born, South Bronx-raised KRS-One dive-bombed the hip hop scene in 1986 with Boogie Down Productions, a collaboration with his former youth counselor and DJ partner Scott La Rock. Their first release, Criminal Minded, heralded by many as one of the first gangsta rap albums, utilized violent imagery and gangsta signifiers to illustrate both the reality of ghetto violence as well as the irony behind its connection to decrepit and racist social institutions. After Scott La Rock was brutally slain in 1987, KRS-One continued as a solo MC, founding hip hop's "Stop the Violence" movement long before the death of Tupac or Biggie. If only we had listened. Because of KRS-One's sometimes incendiary remarks, rappers and critics alike often write him off as arrogant and overly preachy. But if you endure the initial hyperbole, used with the intent to filter out culture spies and confuse Bill O'Reilly-type haters, you can begin to understand the righteousness of his message. Plus, is it really dogmatic when you're talking about a man who upon induction into a now purely imagined hip hop hall of fame will stand side by side with people such as Kool Herc, Run DMC, the Rocksteady Crew and Lee Quinones? Besides, arrogance was always suspected as being hip hop's fifth element. Cultural forecasters, trend mongers, and "new-jack" fans can rave about the next big thing in hip hop, whether it be the lyrical complexity of Sage Francis or the glitched-out beats of Prefuse 73. But unless they listen to Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded from start to finish (not just hear but listen), they will never understand the essence behind hip hop culture or rap music. It's like Ziggy Marley said, "don't know your past, don't know your future." KRS-One is touring in support of his newest album Keep Right. With Soundproof, Debaser, the Phormula and Seattle's own Boom Bap Project opening things up, this will be one of the best hip hop shows you will ever witness. 8 pm, Thursday, March 10 at the WOW Hall. $20. — Steven Sawada
Stoned
and Sampled In the early 1970s, L.A. college student Carl Stone got a job in the CalArts music library backing up LPs to cassettes — three at a time. So he'd hear music from Africa, the European Renaissance, contemporary electronic music, all at once. And he realized that seemingly unrelated sounds made fascinating combinations.
Since then, first using tapes, lately Apple PowerBooks, Stone became the pioneer of sampling and remixing. "I might take the production value of a beautifully produced rock record and somehow fold it over onto Moroccan trance music, and then fuse that onto the rhythm of a bebop piece by Thelonious Monk," he told the LA Times. Since hip hop made sampling, uh, hip, mixing existing recordings into new music has become common, but Stone paved the way. Now based in San Francisco and Tokyo, and extremely popular in Europe, he makes sampling into an exciting live, improvised experience, which you can experience on March 5 in room 198 of the UO music school when he performs a partly improvised piece called Guelaguetza, and on March 6 at DIVA, where he'll present the installation Topolobampo, which he describes as "a real-time installation that starts with pedestrian (in both senses of the word) imagery taken around Japan and does some radical bending, contorting and morphing, along with my patented sound sampling as accompaniment." Around the same time Carl Stone was copying LPs at Cal Arts, Tim Berne, a Lewis & Clark college student, was resting a basketball-twisted ankle when a student in his dorm asked if he knew anyone who wanted to buy an alto sax. Intrigued by the sound, Berne paid up, learned the horn, apprenticed with the great Julius Hemphill in New York, and started forming a series of bands, most notably Blood Count. He's played with the likes of Paul Motian, Joey Baron and Bill Frisell and had pieces recorded by the Kronos and Rova quartets. The other members of his trio, percussionist Tom Rainey and keyboardist Craig Taborn, share strong credentials in the jazz world. On March 11 at the Shedd, Berne's Hard Cell plays wild, hard hitting, funk and free-jazz inspired music that should appeal to the most adventurous jazz fans. For a much mellower musical Shedd experience, try Led Ka'apana's solo show on Thursday, March 10. One of the great masters of Hawaiian slack-key guitar and a fine singer, too, Ka'apana conjures the breezy, relaxed feeling of his home, while mesmerizing guitar fans with the gorgeous tunings and melodies of slack-key guitar. Hey, it almost feels like the tropics out there these days, so why not go for some appropriate music? And on March 15, the Shedd hosts folk legend Tom Russell with Andrew Hardin. You might not have heard of Russell, but you've probably heard his songs, which have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Joe Ely, k.d. lang and many other country/folk stars. Without being at all precious, Russell is among the most literary of songwriters, often covering historical figures (including the early NYC folk scene that Dylan recounts in his new autobiography) and telling compelling — and often hilarious — stories in words and music. We think of Beethoven as the author of the greatest symphonies, the most far-sighted string quartets, etc. etc., yet in his own lifetime, his most popular work was probably his early Septet. It teems with delightful, Mozartean tunes, and Beethoven himself was a little miffed that its popularity eclipsed his later, more serious work. It'll be performed on Thursday, March 3 by the much-praised young ensemble, Concertante, in the UO's Chamber Music Series. They'll also play a similar, suite-like Octet by Schubert that also boasts a dozen memorable, danceable tunes. If you love the joy of sax, check out Beall on March 8 when saxophone master John Sampen performs contemporary works by Portland composer/critic/educator David Schiff, Samuel Adler, Karlheinz Stockhausen (who influenced contemporary composers from Boulez to Miles Davis and even the Beatles), Vache Sharafyan, and Marilyn Shrude, who'll accompany him on piano, along with violinist Maria Sampe and violist Timothy Christie. Flute fans will flock to New Zealander Alexa Still's Beall show March 12, which includes works by Bach, Prokofiev's wonderful Flute Sonata, and modern works by Robert Dick and Ian Clarke. And the UO Percussion Ensemble performs great works by Henry Cowell and other modern composers on March 13.
Purple
Haired People When 3 Leg Torso's newest album arrived in the mail, it finally made sense. "When we started playing, I would look out in the audience and see purple haired people with piercings and purple haired grandmas," Béla Balogh (violin, trumpet) had said in a phone interview.
Once you hear Astor In Paris, their newest release, you'll understand why 3 Leg Torso is a band for all the purple-haired people. The first track on Astor sounds like a song from the soundtrack of Wild At Heart. But you could just as easily imagine the tune floating softly through a swank martini bar in Soho. With strong Eastern European influences, 3 Leg Torso's jaunty music would fit perfectly with the monkey guy at the circus or in a cool cellar café somewhere in Europe where grizzled old men sit smoking black tobacco, playing cards and sipping wine. Thomas Mackay's amazing work on vibraphone, xylophone and marimba give it an old-world gypsy feel while Gary Irvine, percussionist and mallet player, adds zip and spring. On upright bass, Michael Papillo alternates between sleepy, smooth strumming and blazing, punctuated rhythms. But it's the lines of notes, the songs within songs, accordionist Courtney Von Drehle's and Bologh weave together that give the music form and substance. It's the cry of the strings, the spinning tango of notes, the slow dance of rhythm against melody that your ear, and heart, follow. The sound captures the swing and style of popular cocktail couture but draws its energy and enigmatic sound from music so old, few of us were alive when it was born. Featured on NPR's "All Thing's Considered," 3 Leg Torso's self-titled release rose to the 12th spot on Amazon's Top 100 list. Officially this is chamber music. The problem with that term is that it might not clue you in to how cool and sexy this band really is.
AX BILLY GRILL & SPORTS BAR BEANERY ALL AGES BLACK FOREST
CAFE PARADISO CLUB TSUNAMI COFFEE GROVE COOPERATIVE COUNTRY SIDE RESTAURANT COUNTRYSIDE
COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRAND ALL AGES DA HOUZE DOWNTOWN LOUNGE DUCK INN EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EUGENE WINE CELLARS GAME DAY SPORTS BAR GOOD TIMES JO FEDERIGO'S JOE'S BAR & GRILLE JOGGER'S BAR & GRILL JOHN HENRY'S JUANITA'S HIDEAWAY LATITUDE 10 CAFE ALL AGES LAVELLE'S WINE BAR & BISTRO LION'S DEN LOUNGE LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR LUNA MCDONALD THEATRE MCSHANE'S BAR & GRILL MONROE STREET CAFE THE O BAR & GRILL OREGON ELECTRIC STATION OVERTIME GRILL PEABODY'S PERUGINO QUACKER'S SAM BOND'S GARAGE
SAM'S PLACE SAMURAI DUCK STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE SWEETWATER'S TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL TINY TAVERN WETLANDS THE WOODSMAN
WOW HALL ALL AGES CORVALLIS AJ'S BOMBS AWAY CAFE IOVINO'S RISTORANTE MURPHY'S PLATINUM NIGHT CLUB SQUIRREL'S TOMMY'S PEACOCK
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