music
LET IT POUR
in 2012
FALLINGSKYBREWING.COM
Opening Very Soon!
1334 Oak Alley
fri jan 13
The Essentials & Craig Chee
8pm • $5
Purple Sparrows 5-7pm • no cover
sat jan 21
Son Mela’o
9:30pm • $12
Emerald Knights Debutant Pageant
Drag Show 6-8pm • $10
tues jan 24
PCP and Sightless Airmen
Portland Cello Project (PCP) is an interlocking mass of classical
and indie rock music that will make you stop and ponder just what
else cellos are capable of when in the hands of incredibly talented
and stylistically brave musicians.
The band also knows how to team up and collaborate with other
impressive musical innovators, as it proved when it joined forces to
create The Thao and Justin Power Sessions with said artists. The
laundry list of PCP collaborators reads like a who’s who of eclectic
pacesetters — Peter Yarrow, The Dandy Warhols, Mirah, just to
namedrop a few.
Maybe it’s because PCP has toured all over and with a vast range
of different music acts from punk rockers to metalheads, or perhaps
it’s just what you get when you listen to a band that has more than
800 pieces of unique music to showcase, but PCP is a group that
lives up to its hype and then some. Oh, and as if you needed another
reason to go see a show that can only be described as epic, PCP will
be gigging with guest singer-songwriter Israel Nebecker from Blind
Pilot — try finding something better to do; you will fail.
Portland Cello Project with Israel Nebecker of Blind Pilot play 7
pm Thursday, Jan. 19, at WOW Hall; $15 adv., $18 door.
— Dante Zuñiga-West
Funk, Fun, Fermentation
Watching a carboy of beer or a jar of kimchi gurgle with life or
erupt from a blow-off tube is like peeking into an alternative universe.
At the Fun with Fermentation Festival hosted by the Willamette
Valley Sustainable Foods Alliance, you can learn all about that and
more.
“There are a myriad of health benefits,” organizer Christina Sasser
says of fermentation and the event. She says that folks should go “also
for the culinary delight, as a way to preserve and enhance, and to
become more in touch with our bodies, ancestral traditions and current
food environment.”
The list of health benefits for eating fermented food is
overwhelming: from anti-cancer to immune enhancement, allergy
prevention, healthy hair and nail growth, to enhanced gut flora and
food bioavailability. A diet rich in living foods might cause one to
scratch her head before eating a slice of white bread or a pan full of
greasy stir-fry ever again. But perhaps one of the best aspects of
fermentation is the potential it has to bring people together in a
community. The Fun with Fermentation Festival has been doing that for
three years now.
“It’s a great community-oriented gathering with an abundance of
food and drink,” said Sasser. “It’s education focused with demos and
workshops, and also showcases local artisan and sustainable food
producers that create fermented products. It’s all part of strengthening
local resiliency.”
Fermentation is one of the oldest ways of preserving food. But be
warned, that once you throw in your dietary lot with these funky yeasts
and bacteria there’s little chance you’ll want to live life without them.
The Fun with Fermentation Festival takes place 11 am-4 pm
Saturday, Jan. 14, at WOW Hall; $10-$20 per person, $5 with 2 cans of
food. For more info go to wvsalliance.org — Andrew Hitz
No Empty Spaces
Bend, Oregon — known for ski bums, sprawling subdivisions,
beautiful scenery and ... experimental prog-influenced post-rock?
No, I wouldn’t have guessed that either, but Bend’s Empty Space
Orchestra is beginning to make a big noise both east of the
Cascades and up and down the Willamette Valley.
The classically trained group follows in the footsteps of bands
like Battles and Mogwai — generally eschewing vocals and
traditional song structure for trancelike ambient jams. The band’s
recent release was recorded and engineered in Sacramento by
Robert Cheeks (known for his work with the Deftones) and mixed
in Seattle by Matt Bayless (known for working with Mastodon and
Isis). Traces of those bands can be heard in ESO’s sound.
Empty Space Orchestra is epic and heavy one minute, face-
meltingly experimental the next, and the band ends up groovin’
like the heyday of the jazz-fusion era, fueled by the skronkin’
saxophone of multi-instrumentalist Graham Jacobs. Imagine Black
Sabbath and King Crimson remixed by Lee Scratch Perry with
Herbie Hancock sitting in.
Throughout it all, these guys stay incredibly melodic and tight
as hell thanks in no small part to drummer Lindsey Elias. She is
one ferocious musician and a force of nature behind the kit. On
the ESO website, Graham Jacobs explains “I was spending a lot of
time thinking about what Miles Davis used to say: ‘It’s not about
the space you play, but the space you leave.’ That’s where the
‘Empty Space’ came from … ironically we don’t leave much space
in our music.”
Empty Space Orchestra plays with VTRN 10 pm Thursday, Jan.
19, at Luckey’s; $5. — William Kennedy
Rosie Ledet and
the Zydeco Playboys
Return of the Whomp
8pm • $14 adv/$18 door
fri jan 27
Shook Twins & Opal Creek
8pm • $5 adv/$8 door
CECE and Band 5-7pm • no cover
sat jan 28
Pigs on the Wing
Plays Dark Side of the Moon to Wizard of Oz • pig-wing.com
8:30pm • $8 adv/$10 door
Tulsi and the Gnu Deal & Bad News Tooth
5-7pm •$5 sug. don.
coming attractions
feb 2nd Tracy Grammer
feb 3rd Guy Davis
feb 4th Breathe Owl Breathe w/ Emperor X
feb 25th Chuck Prophet
e every
ev
er wednesday
FAMILY
FAM NIGHT 6-7:30pm
OPE MIC NIGHT All Ages • 7:30pm
OPEN
ever thursday
every
OPEN
OP JAZZ JAM 5-7pm
cozmicpresents.com
Dubstep has become synonymous with blunt-force bass and
overproduced breakless anarchy. Vibesquad and Kraddy,
however, retain the grimy bubbles and ethereal space in their
music that originally defined the style without sacrificing the
raw modern power that fans eat up.
Vibesquad, hailing from Colorado’s electric triangle,
exhibits the obvious influence of early house and techno from
his Chicago youth, allowing the bass to drive straight ahead,
not careen through every layer of the mainstream
superhighway. Controlling rubber decks through lush wobbles,
Vibesquad kicks an organic funk-based groove. Tracks like
“Porcupine” from Return of the Pudding People punch
insistent, ephemeral dub that shiftily floats on the heads of the
drums.
Kraddy embraces a squelchy, grittier style. After his
departure from the L.A.-based Glitch Mob in 2009, Kraddy’s
solo stuff has switched from sonic urgency to a pounding
sword-like stitchwork quilt of sampled cuts. Listening to
Kraddy’s recently released Labyrinth EP, you get the sense of
impending escape from the rat race, a bass escalation in your
ribcage. Nonetheless, Kraddy maintains a punctual control over
his sound, breaking perfectly and avoiding the temptation of
jackhammer chaos.
These two artists, both exhibiting different styles within a
rapidly evolving genre, boast critical chops in utilizing the
sounds of hip hop, jazz and grunge to further purée canonical
music.
Vibesquad and Kraddy play 8 pm Friday, Jan. 13, at
McDonald Theatre; $15 adv.; $18 door. — Patrick Newson
541-338-9333
199 W 8th St • Eugene, Oregon
corner of 8th & Charnelton
24 JANUARY 12, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
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