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These Are the 10 Local Artists Portland Music Experts Say You've Got to Hear
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These Are the 10 Local ArtistsPortland Music Experts Say You’ve Got to Hear.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY WESLEY LAPOINTE
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There’s never been a weirder year for Portland music. Clubs shut down, tours were canceled, whole festivals got scrapped. Bands couldn’t even get together in the same room to practice. Sure, it was still possible to upload a quarantine bedroom project to Bandcamp. But Portland is a city that thrives on live music—and for more than a year, the city was silent. Of course, that doesn’t mean Portlanders stopped making music. It only made it harder to fi nd. That’s why we approached our annual Best New Bands issue a little differently this year. Instead of a wide-ranging poll of music industry insiders, we reached out to 10 of the most obsessive local experts—the musicians, talent bookers, journalists and curators who always have their ear to the ground, even during a health crisis—and asked them to share the best Portland artists they discovered during the pandemic. This year’s artists are listed in alphabetical order rather than ranked, which is fi tting: This is possibly our widest-ranging class yet, and it’s never been so hard to compare them. It’s long been apparent that Portland music is way more than just dudes in jean jackets playing guitars, and this issue makes that abundantly clear. We’ll introduce you to rising stars in the city’s thriving jazz and hip-hop scenes, as well as artists in a category all their own. There’s a neo-soul singer who blew up on TikTok (page 15) and a rising rapper who developed an online following in Germany (page 11). There’s a DJ who splices indie rock with go-go music (page 13) and a sound artist who builds songs from the electrical impulses of fl owers (page 11). Hopefully, when we do this again, the list will come together as it normally does, from a year of stumbling into a house show and finding your new favorite band, or having your mind blown by a recommendation from a friend of a friend, or getting to a show early and watching the local opener outshine the headliner. But this year’s issue isn’t just a placeholder. We hope it brings back the thrill of musical discovery—and serves as a reminder that, in Portland, that thrill is never gone. —Shannon Gormley, Music & Visual Arts Editor
“Crystal Quartez is a very talented sound artist. I am always impressed with her sonic explorations and conceptual projects. Most recently, I really enjoyed her project Sonic Blooming, which was a self-guided soundwalk meditation through Portland’s International Rose Test Garden, and incorporated the use of a process called biodata sonification to express the electrical impulses of the roses themselves. It was such a gift, especially in early summer when live shows had not yet really returned, to have an immersive musical experience like that out in the world.”
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Rocks, flowers, fire, twater, the sounds of colliding objects— those are just a few sources of the sounds Crystal Cortez has used in her music as Crystal Quartez. By her own admission, Cortez’s ambient, meditative body of work comprises about “90% field recordings.”
“When I’m outside and I’m listening, I’m thinking about what a sound means to me and what emotion it elicits,” she says. “Asking myself questions like this, then literally transforming these sounds in the computer, helps me get a better understanding of the world that I exist in and how I want to change it.”
Cortez’s self-invented instruments are no less idiosyncratic: a headband that controls the music based on the user’s movements, an “elemental altar” played using fire and water, and a sensor that converts the electrical impulses of flowers to sound.
The headband is the source of her upcoming album Somatic Mirror, tentatively slated for an August release on local label Beacon Sound. During a performance in 2019—one of her first as a solo artist—Cortez invited members of the audience to hold mirrorlike sensors. Where they chose to move determined the outcome of the music, with a cascading chime effect growing louder the closer the participants stood to a central sensor.
More than just a means of making music, that kind of collaboration is a part of Cortez’s personal philosophy.
“I always had the inclination to empower people to perform,” she says.
The San Francisco-born, Minnesota-raised, Portland-based artist is a professor of creative coding at Portland Community College—a position she attained only a few years after attending a coding workshop organized by that very department. The workshop opened her mind to sonic possibilities far beyond the synths she was using at the time as one half of the avant-garde duo Sea Charms.
“I saw the wildest projects that were incorporating sound and visuals and lights,” she says. “They really seemed to accurately reflect the intentions of the person who made them in a way that I hadn’t seen before. I realized that coding allows you to really create systems that are modeled after the way your brain works.”
Cortez says she prefers to have “a degree of separation between like my normal self and my performance persona,” hence the bedazzled outfits and ritualistic stage setups that are hallmarks of her Quartez performances.
But even if she comes off as some sort of mysterious, ancient goddess onstage, her degree of separation from the audience is almost zero.
That’s as true of her shows as it is of the Adaptive Instruments project she co-founded last year, in which she and a group of engineers and artists collaborate on electronic instruments designed for people with intellectual disabilities.
Equity and accessibility are virtues Cortez holds dear, especially in the worlds of coding and experimental music, which Cortez has found hostile in the past. In coding classes, she was usually one of only a few students who weren’t men. As a member of Sea Charms, she was often explicitly told she was booked only to have a female act on the bill.
The existence of these barriers feels even more absurd once you’ve seen Cortez in action, joyfully melding her audience’s minds with her performances and installations. Her work is thrillingly unusual, and if it enables or inspires more aspiring musicians to realize their wildest ideas, she’s done her job.
“I’m just trying to show other people that [coding] isn’t a tool that’s just for white men,” she says. “I think that whenever we can share the tools for creation or for expression with people, we’ll actually get more answers.” DANIEL BROMFIELD.
The Dutchess
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Raquel Divar, 2020 Best New Band finalist
“She gives authentic West Coast turn-up music with fire lyrics and cold delivery. Stage presence: ‘I don’t give a fuck.’”
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The Dutchess didn’t expect her first album to take off during a pandemic. For a while, she didn’t even plan to drop a project at all.
Released at the end of 2019, the rapper’s self-titled album is a tight 20 minutes of hard-hitting bars, catchy hooks and bass-heavy, fast-moving beats. The fact that she barely had time to play shows to promote the album before the pandemic hit did little to stall her momentum. Each song on the album quickly racked up thousands of streams from listeners around the world.
“It blew my mind,” she says. “It was well received by the U.K. and Germany it was so well received.”
The Portland rapper—who prefers to keep her given name out of print—has been writing her own music since she was 7 years old. But she didn’t start performing until 2019, at the age of 25. And it wasn’t until her friend and engineer, Trevor Scott, suggested putting out an album that she considered it a real possibility.
“He was just like, ‘Make an album.’ And I was just like, ‘Facts,’” she says. “He believes in me, hard. Trevor definitely put the encouragement behind dropping a freshman album. ”
That’s not to say that Dutchess lacks self-confidence, though—that’s plenty evident when she’s slapping down lyrics about how the world’s her footstool and dropping goofball lines like, “The Dutchess on your ass like a thong.” But that outward bravado is powered by a kind of inward focus.
“When I first started getting into rapping, I wouldn’t even turn the radio on,” she says. “I would only play my own shit for like four years straight.”
It’d be easy to lump the Dutchess in with Cardi B, City Girls, Saweetie and the current wave of high-energy women rappers dominating the music charts. But even if she had been listening to the radio when she was first honing her craft, most of those names weren’t even around. Still, fans of those artists will find plenty to like in the Dutchess’ music: whomping, genre-defying beats, catchy hooks and unrelenting bars that blend raw confidence with sly humor.
With the exception of the occasional livestream performance, the Dutchess has been relatively quiet for the past year, in part because she was dealing with the mess that was 2020. Being on the front lines of last year’s protests was especially traumatic.
As a way to decompress, Dutchess and her husband recently took an interest in motorcycles. Though she admits it’s been somewhat of a distraction from her music, riding as healing is a fitting analogy, in a way, for the cathartic release her music provides.
The Dutchess doesn’t want to be anyone’s role model, but in a way that’s its own form of kindness.
“Be who you are, because real life ain’t gonna treat you like the bitch you’re pretending to be, they’re gonna treat you like who you actually are,” she says. “You are you, and you’re bomb.” SHANNON GORMLEY.
“Portland is having a refreshing moment is hasn’t seen in maybe 40 years. Instead of the endless parade of rock, indie rock and jambands, the energy in the scene appears to be coalescing around a group of very talented young musicians playing jazz, funk and soul inspired “groove music,” with leaders of the pack being Charlie, Cory and Peter from Greaterkind.”
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Before the pandemic, Greaterkind was hard to miss.
Made up of keyboardist Charlie Brown III, drummer Cory Limuaco and guitarist Peter Knudsen, Greaterkind has backed up more than their fair share of musicians, from local Portland artists to national acts like Judith Hill and Brian Jackson. Before COVID-19 canceled shows, it seemed Greaterkind was on the bill for every other dive show and pub jam.
But after COVID-19 hit, their music became hard to find. Though Greaterkind is arguably Portland’s most understated yet exciting jazz fusion group, the trio has released only two songs, meaning the entirety of their material is just under five minutes long.
Now, in the final stages of the pandemic, the band is finally ready to take center stage with music of their own. Later this month, Greaterkind will finally drop its second EP, El Corazon.
“We’re sitting on some music,” Knudsen says. “We’re like hens, we got eggs underneath us. And this egg is hot.”
The band started in 2015 at Dante’s now-defunct Dookie Jam monthly session. Knudsen, who was just getting his foot in the door of the Portland music scene at the time, remembers seeing a 17-year-old Brown lying on stage fast asleep. As a minor, the stage was the only part of the club Brown was allowed to be.
“I was like, ‘Who is this kid?’” Knudsen remembers. “Then he woke up and started playing, and I was like, ‘Oh, damn.’”
Brown and Limuaco met at Portland State University, where they formed their own group, Yo Daddy’s Funk. Eventually, through the serendipitous, collaborative nature of local music scenes, Brown, Limuaco and Knudsen began playing together.
Over the years, the trio has developed an almost telepathic connection onstage, much like how longtime friends start adopting each other’s vernacular. That deep understanding is largely what made their first and only EP possible during the pandemic.
The two-track Humphrey EP is straight-forward jazz with cushiony grooves and a modern bent. The appreciation for the genre’s tradition is apparent, yet it’s forward-facing. As Brown puts it, it’s less about complicated compositions than about creating an environment that surrounds the listener.
As with anything the group does, Humphrey is clearly the work of a tight-knit band. Surprisingly, though, the EP wasn’t recorded in a studio or even at the same place and time. It started with a solo drum form Limuaco sent to Brown and Knudsen, who later added the rest.
“Me and [Brown] were in our boxers in the morning and wrote those chords, one and done, eating cereal,” Knudsen says.
According to Limuaco, the final product was exactly what he imagined when he recorded the initial drum sequence.
“It’s our COVID baby,” Brown adds.
If Greaterkind’s work has a throughline, it’s an emphasis on community. The band also founded the label People Music, a collective of Portland-grown musicians. Through People Music, the band helps artists produce tracks, rolling out promo and designing packages, all funded by grants and personal investors.
To Brown, it’s a matter of leveling the playing field—he doesn’t want an artist’s vision being compromised by a lack of funding or access.
“If an artist has a vision or idea, we’re supporting that completely with any resources that we have,” Brown says. “It’s just like, ‘You know what? Fuck the industry.’”
The label has released nine projects so far, including the Humphrey EP, with members of the band playing on any track they and the artist feel could benefit. But lately, putting out more Greaterkind music has jumped in priority.
“With things opening back up,” says Limuaco, “and being in the same space on a regular basis, it’s really gonna push things forward for us.” JORDAN MONTERO. Nothing Growing Pains does is intentional. At least, that’s according to guitarist Carl Taylor, a member of the Portland high school band that became a stalwart in the DIY house show scene before the pandemic hit.
“It’s true that nothing we do is intentional, but we always try to sound like an emo band,” says Taylor. “But we’ve always fallen a bit short with writing intense, dramatic songs, and I think that’s how our sound is what it is.”
For a band that formed in high school, however—living in four of Portland’s quadrants and taking the MAX an hour to rehearse, members are now split between Portland and Eugene—intentional feels like exactly the right word to describe them.
Made up of frontwoman Kalia Storer, guitarists Jack Havrilla and Carl Taylor, and drummer Kyle Kraft, the band met three years ago when they were sophomores and juniors in high school. Havrilla, Taylor and Kraft met playing in a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard tribute show with School of Rock, Portland’s music school. They asked Storer to join after hearing her playing bass and singing in one of the school’s practice rooms.
Some of the members bonded over their love for emo music and what they call “radio-friendly” indie rock like Death Cab for Cutie, Blink 182 and the Killers—the only band they all love is Joy Division.
Growing Pains makes music that falls somewhere between emo and indie rock, a distinction they feel is a kind of happy accident. Sometimes, the band makes poppy, jangly rock, while other songs are powered by hard guitar riffs. But almost always, their songs have big, luminous choruses that give you a feeling of infiniteness: like driving fast through a tunnel or looking at a star and spinning around and around until you fall down.
“I think that’s worked to our benefit,” says Kraft. “We kind of don’t fit that mold of being an absolutely emo band or absolutely an indie band. I think we sit right in between, and I think that’s one of our strengths in a sense that it’s not too much of one thing, and from that, we’re able to make our own style.”
Next up, the band has a music video that will come out soon for their song “Houseboat.” But they’re mostly excited to start playing live shows again, which they say are crucial to their songwriting practice.
“We haven’t been able to write a lot of new music, because in the past we’ve written songs by having a rough draft and then playing it live and seeing what stuck,” says Taylor. “We’d play it like 20 times live. It’s hard to trust your own judgment sometimes.”
“I think with live shows,” adds Kraft, “It’ll be easy for us to get back in the mode of writing songs again.” SOPHIA JUNE.
Growing Pains
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Mo Troper, 2020 Best New Band finalist
“The musicianship is insane, the songwriting is super sharp, and their latest record, Heaven Spots, sounds phenomenal. I also nominated Growing Pains because Portland tastemakers have historically snubbed loud guitar music made by young people. This is some of the best.”
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“Milc has been one of Portland hip-hop’s best-kept secrets for a while now. But at some point last year, it seems like he decided enough was enough, then flipped the a switch and has just been in a crazy-prolific zone ever since. He’s been relentlessly dropping projects every couple of months now (teaming up with producers Calvin Valentine, Sxlxmxn and Lawz Spoken), and he just keeps getting better with each one. I’m most impressed with how precise and efficient he is with his writing–he takes no bars off and makes sure that every single line in his verses hits exactly how it should.”
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Ben “Milc” Johnson is still getting used to the idea that he might be good at this whole rap thing.
Don’t get confused—he’s plenty confident. According to his calculations, he’s better than “99.9%” of the other rappers out there. It’s just that, until recently, only he and a small circle of friends seemed to be aware of it.
That’s starting to change. Over the past year, Johnson has made it a point to get in the ear of his favorite Portland producers, and the number of collaborative projects he has lined up suggests he’s making a significant impression. Even now, though, he’s not entirely sure he’s impressing on skills alone.
“I mean, they fuck with me probably because I get shit done hella fast. And I’m annoying,” says Johnson, 30, “so I’ll keep texting them to send me more beats. It’s probably not just that they think I’m good, it’s that I’ll actually follow through with shit.”
Still, make no mistake: The guy’s got skills.
He’s been honing them for a long time. Coming of age in the late ’90s, at a time when hip-hop was truly becoming inescapable, Johnson started kicking rhymes as a bespectacled fifth grader, mostly at the playgrounds and basketball courts of Northeast Portland, where he grew up. In high school, he and his friend Devin “Brill” Boss formed the group Load B, whose give-no-fucks, take-no-prisoners style alienated them from Portland’s socially conscious rap scene—both on record and onstage.
“We were kind of assholes,” he says. “We would just get too drunk and be fucked up onstage. I’m kind of proud of it and I’m kind of not.”
These days, Johnson is less prone to shock value, though that doesn’t mean he’s pivoted toward message music or any other obvious lyrical bent. Mostly, he just says whatever springs to mind. He prefers the “all bars, no hooks” approach—unspooling sports references, drug jokes and bits of autobiography in a never-ending stream of consciousness that’s at once dizzying and hard to turn off.
At the start of 2020, it’d been five years since the last Load B release, and quarantine made Johnson antsy to get rapping again. He began filling his Twitter page with video freestyles—sub-two-minute brain dumps often set to a classic beat and filmed in his living room—that caught the attention of the local scene. True to form, he spent the year cranking out a series of quick and dirty projects with various beatmakers, including Lawz Spoken, Calvin Valentine and Stewart Villain. And he’s got plenty more in the chamber: Wolf Side, with Illmaculate producer Chase Moore; a just-finished project with Seattle’s Andy Savoy featuring underground hero Blu; and a second collaboration with Calvin Valentine as Tiger Milc.
It’s a lot to keep up with. But for Johnson, it’s not about sheer prolificacy—it’s about getting a little bit better, each time out.
“I’m writing the same song over and over again. I still haven’t made the one I fuck with the most,” he says. “I haven’t taken the right amount of time [or] the right approach yet. I’m always chasing that.” MATTHEW SINGER.
DJ MPC
RECOMMENDED BY: DJ Ambush, operations and content manager for the Numberz FM
“DJ MPC embodies everything that keeps me excited about still DJing after almost three decades. And from the opposite side of the turntables as a spectator, her song choices are a constant reminder of how well she manages to stay tapped into her audience—playing the songs you wanted to hear and introducing you to the remixes you didn’t know you needed to hear.”
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To tech heads, “MPC” stands for microprocessing controller. For Jeannetta Jackson, who performs as DJ MPC and is a tech head herself, it also has a personal meaning that couldn’t be further from its technological definition.
“My ‘MPC’ stands for ‘Mary Poppin’ Cherries,’” says Jackson, whose friends gave her the nickname several years ago. “I wanted to take that name and brand and keep it with me, because I like to leave people with the idea that you’re going to get some sounds you’re familiar with, but I’m also going to bless your ears with something you’ve probably never heard but you’ll really like.”
Jackson has only been officially slicing and splicing songs together for a couple of years. But due to her day job as a semiconductor engineer, she has plenty of experience taking things apart and putting them back together in new ways.
It was Jackson’s job that brought her to Portland three years ago.
“Oregon is one of those things that’s not talked about often coming from the East, so there was a mystery to it,” Jackson says. “I think moving around influences my sound because I get to get bits and pieces of every place that I go, and that’s actually incorporated into my sound.”
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., she’s influenced by the “East Coast flair” of Go-Go, the percussion-heavy blend of funk, jazz and hip-hop that’s basically the District’s official sound. Portland has inspired her to mix in a bit of indie pop and rock, though.
The cut-up that started it all was an R&B mix of Janet Jackson’s “Velvet Rope” with “One Is the Magic #” by Jill Scott.
“The first time was like sex,” says Jackson, “and I haven’t looked back since.”
Lately, she’s been digging a lot on newer artists like Jazmine Sullivan, Masego, SZA and Tierra Whack. That’s part of why she’s such a fan of DJing in the digital age— the wide range of what and who you’re able to access.
“There really are some DJs that are ‘controller versus vinyl,’ but for me, as a DJ, I’m all about the sound. I don’t care about your equipment,” says Jackson. “There’s nothing as pure as that vinyl sound—don’t get me wrong—but when it comes to music, curating and giving people a sound, I love the fact that with the digital world, you can reach as many audiences as possible.”
Still, no matter what she’s able to access with the internet, she’s still big on local inspiration, citing DJ ALoSo and Blossom artists she’d want to collaborate with next.
“I always like to share, collaborate and be inspired,” she says. “This city is melting with a whole bunch of artists and really good people. You can always hit them up.” CERVANTÉ POPE.
Rose City Band
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“Rose City Band is the perfect summer soundtrack. Like eating a mushroom cap at the river or having dinner with friends in your garden.”
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Ripley Johnson intended Earth Trip as a summer album, but he got a little more summer than he bargained for.
The day after he put out his third album as mastermind of the Rose City Band, Portland broke its record for hottest day ever, with temperatures reaching 108 degrees.
“Usually summer is my happy time, and in Portland it historically has been a joyous time after months of darkness and rain,” says Johnson. “So it’s a tough blow to have to deal with smoke and fires and climate change.”
The impressively bearded guitarist and singer-songwriter moved to Portland in 2012 from seasonless San Francisco, where he’d already established himself with his bands Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo.
“We moved here partially because we wanted to be back on the West Coast, but also just to be so close to nature,” he says of himself and his wife and Moon Duo co-conspirator, Sanae Yamada.
While much of Johnson’s earlier work buzzes with the bad-trip energy of the Doors or the Velvet Underground, Earth Trip is all wide-eyed wonder, assisted by Barry Walker’s expansive steel guitar playing. The mood is redolent of classic country, but everything seems slowed and suspended, like a flower in perpetual bloom. Johnson’s on the cover, walking in the forest and staring up at the sky—an appropriate image for music that prefers to take the scenic route.
Johnson doesn’t do psychedelics as much as he did in his teens and 20s, during which time he mainly listened to the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and the other classic-rock staples that still inform his sound. But while working on lyrics for Earth Trip, he decided to take mushrooms again.
“I thought I’d write all the lyrics on mushrooms,” he says, “but, of course, that doesn’t work.”
Still, it did help him get in touch with his younger self.
“I’m looking back in a lot of ways, and I’m exploring the type of music that I listened to when I was younger,” says Johnson. “And while working on this record, it sort of brought me back to that mindset and those formative experiences.”
Those formative artists, the Stones and Neil Young in particular, occupied one of the most turbulent and traumatic times in American history just as Johnson does as a witness to COVID-19 and climate change. But while the Stones’ canonical, Mick Taylor-aided run and Neil Young’s “ditch” albums drew inspiration from the disappointment that set in once the hippie revolution began to splinter and sour, Johnson prefers to keep his spirits a little bit higher.
“I’m a realist, but also I tend to be an optimist,” he says. “I’ve turned to music for relief a lot of times. If there are heavy things on my mind, that might come out in the music a little bit, but it’s always tempered by my inherent optimism. Music for me is an expression of healing.” DANIEL BROMFIELD.
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Casey Jarman, Mississippi Studios marketing manager, journalist and former Willamette Week music editor.
“[Battery] is just absolutely brilliant. Probably the local discovery that I’ve listened to the most in the last year.”
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Cole Mitchell Johnson speaks about his debut album Battery like a designer. He’s all process, all pasta on the wall.
“Part of what’s held me back, in the past, is overthinking,” Mitchell explains. “Battery is a ‘first thought is the best thought’ sort of thing.”
Even the moniker of Sqip (pronounced “skip”) came to him as a simple revelation that the tracks on the record “skip from one to the next.”
A graphic designer at North Portland’s Fisk studio, Johnson’s professional reputation is that of someone who glides between platforms seamlessly. Though he played music in Chicago before moving to Portland in 2019, it’s not hard to consider Sqip yet another cross-medium flex.
Mitchell self-released Battery on June 5, 2020, at a time when quarantine was settling in and unrest was boiling over in the streets. While he says the album is not an explicit response to the murder of George Floyd, he was thinking about the pain he and other Black people endure—Johnson is Black and Indian—and “how I personally could survive.”
The album’s overall feeling is positive and romantic, but there’s also a complex energy that comes through in Johnson’s specific brand of ambient tension.
“I like playing soft music really loudly,” he says. “Ambient music with loud drums or loud bass.”
The result is a little like if Frank Ocean spent more time with his synths. On songs like “Boot” and “Voice,” Johnson actually allows the tracks to end midvocals, creating moments of curiosity on what would otherwise be an album to play in the background of a pleasant afternoon or a romantic interlude.
He says he found the abruptness exciting. However, the abrupt cut-offs also seem to point toward some of the album’s more standout songs, like “Changes,” a simple, sweet, somewhat sad ballad about the transmutative qualities of a relationship.
It feels way too intentional to be a mere happy accident. In all its atmosphere and emotions there’s something about Battery that feels very well designed.
“Sometimes I go in knowing what I want to make conceptually,” Johnson says. “[With Battery,] I wanted to ask, ‘What kind of music comes out of a person naturally?’” SUZETTE SMITH.
Treneti
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“This past year has shifted my listening habits, with music being an active part of fi nding calm and centering myself in the midst of all the confusion. Treneti’s avant-garde jazz and soul explorations have deep meditative qualities and nourish the spirit—throw this on in your headphones and let her voice wash over you. It will do you a world of good, I promise.”
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Treneti Brown didn’t fi nd her musical instrument until four years ago. A professional dancer, her body had long been her instrument—until she picked up a bass for the fi rst time and didn’t put it down for two hours. “I find myself playing a lot of different instruments,” she says, laughing, “but not knowing how to play any of them.” Brown was undergoing some big life changes around the time she first picked up a bass. In 2017, she left her hometown of Chicago and was traveling around the country. She spent time at a spiritual sanctuary in Northern Michigan, where she meditated for seven hours a day and learned about toning, chanting, frequency therapy and how to layer sounds with gongs and tuning forks. She also went to Guatemala, where she worked with a drum shaman and learned about Indigenous vibration chanting. Eventually, she moved to Portland, where she found a scene eager to welcome her music: a wide-ranging collection of staccato electronic beats that are equally meditative and sultry, and soothing electro soundscapes, grounded with chantlike vocals. Brown had a rapid rise in Portland’s music scene, playing a couple of smaller shows in 2018 before getting booked at Mississippi Studios. Soon, she was selling out both Mississippi Studios and the Old Church. Still, she had to overcome a steep learning curve producing and releasing music. In January 2020, she released her first album, Psalms of Saturn, a more straightforward album with bass, drums and vocals, followed by her electronic EP Her’isness in December 2020. There’s a hypnotic quality to Treneti’s music. You fi nd your head involuntarily bobbing along, and your body less tense, like you’ve been given a contemplative sound bath. That healing effect is intentional. “Some music has a regenerative, soothing effect on the body, and other music is abrasive. Some music is outright disturbing to the vessel,” says Brown. “To me, it’s really important to create a sanctuary and a place of nourishment with sound.” When Brown talks about the healing properties of her music, she’s not speaking figuratively. A self-described math and science nerd, Brown builds her own synths with specific frequencies that have regenerative properties for the body. For example, 528 hertz is the solfeggio frequency, the frequency of the healthy human energetic fi eld and the love frequency, while 25 hertz is the frequency of the purr of a cat. “These are the ancestral frequencies,” she says. “This is how, in ceremony and prayer and ritual, our ancestors channel those divine frequencies. I’m just basically doing that same thing.” The influence of healing sounds is persistent in her work; she also runs Solaris Voice Academy, which helps artists develop their voices with holistic singing training and empowerment techniques. But it’s somewhere between the emotional and mathematical space of healing frequencies that Treneti’s music thrives. “So much of me was unfulfilled until I discovered not just music, but music production and working literally with the frequencies and mixing and balancing them,” she says. “When I tapped into that, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I’ve been looking for: This is the math.’ All synthesis is trigonometry at the end of the day. It gave me a whole space to be a nerd.” SOPHIA JUNE.
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“Veana Baby has a warm presence, open heart and stellar voice. She’s also the producer of some of her strongest material. Over beats or live instrumentation, Veana has powerhouse moments that could bring an audience to tears, balanced with playful bars for some gigs. She’s motivated and talented; that’s a good combo.”
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Jordan Fletcher, [E]mpress
For Veana Baby, Portland is more than just her current home—it’s a key part of her creative process. That said, she knows her career is already leading her somewhere else. “I’m a wanderer, and I feel like my next place is calling to me right now,” says Veana Baby, born Rhaveana Rockette. “But this whole city has been my inspiration.” The Minneapolis-born and -bred soul singer–whose music recalls everything from the lyrical vulnerability of Summer Walker to the buttery neo-soul tones of Jill Scott—came to the Pacifi c Northwest on a whim and ended up creating a whole life for herself. In just three years, she’s built a substantial fan following and career. Her experiences and relationships here have inspired some of her most streamed tracks. Rockette considers “Serenity” to be the fi rst real song she wrote, about a falling out she had with a group of Portland friends. But during the pandemic, her career took off in a distinctly nonlocal way. “I’m a master at TikTok,” says Rockette. “I’m not even gonna humble myself.” It was her poetry, not her music, that fi rst won her a following on the social media app. Last September, Rockette posted a video of herself freestyling a poem. In just one day, it racked up almost 2 million views. Rockette wasn’t intending to go viral, she was just sharing a part of her creative process. Rockette’s approach to writing is a little less soul and a lot more rap than she originally intended. She produces some of her music, including beats that blend modern, slow-broiled trap with throwback babymaking R&B and neo-soul. She often freestyles over a beat, then writes a song based on what she sings in the moment. Rockette’s so good at TikTok, she claims she started the trend where posters use an automated voice to narrate their captions. Whether or not that’s true, it speaks to a problem many other Black creators have called out, and one that’s an issue in so many other aspects of culture—white people stealing ideas from Black people. “I didn’t really think it was real until it happened to me,” says Rockette. “White creators really do steal everything from Black creators and get way more views and followers from doing what we do. I’m seeing it everywhere now.” That’s a big part of why Rockette, like many other Black creators, has taken a break from the platform, leaving it creatively “dry” in her words. The app has also had an effect on her mental health, as has Instagram, which she took a break from when the George Floyd protests started. “A lot of people unburden in my comments,” she says. “Absorbing that energy is a lot.” Still, she’s kept busy, and will soon release her sophomore album, Shit Happens, and launch her own YouTube channel. The break from social media has been necessary for her creatively but didn’t come without stress itself. She’s back on track, though, and more prepared than ever to show the world who exactly Veana Baby is. “I got nervous about losing followers,” she says. “But I had to train my mind to realize if I’m gonna be famous, it’s gonna happen no matter what.” CERVANTÉ POPE.
STREET
OUT AND ABOUT
Who we saw around town this week.
AARON LEE
AARON LEE
AARON LEE
CHRIS NESSETH JOSEPH BLAKE JR.
AARON LEE
MICK HANGLAND-SKILL
DANIEL COLE
Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock tells Vulture about the time he got super stoned and wound up on the Jumbotron at a Blazers game.
WIKICOMMONS MEGATRON980
Former NFL star Chad Johnson leaves $1,000 tip at a Portland IHOP.
Shalom Y’all’s downtown location officially reopens as Lil’ Shalom.
Portland bans the sale and use of fireworks on the Fourth of July… The Trail Blazers announce the NBA’s first partnership with a cryptocurrency company.
Austin restaurateur Gabe Erales wins Top Chef’s Portland season amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
BoltBus, the discount bus operator that would ferry Portlanders as far north as Vancouver, B.C., for as low as $1, suspends service indefinitely.
TRAIL BLAZERS BRUCE ELY/PORTLAND
AWESOME
AUSTIN PHELPS STEVE MORGAN
FACEBOOK Portland drummer and KMHD radio host Carlton Jackson dies at age 60.
AARON MESH
…but Portland sets them off anyway.
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ROGEREBERT.COM
SEE: The Sparks Brothers At first glance, the cult rock band Sparks seems a bizarre subject to receive the epic rockumentary treatment. Ron and Russell Mael’s long-tenured art pop group has released 24 and counting chart-nudging albums that have flirted with relevance during the glam and disco periods before retreating toward a decidedly niche appeal in the past few decades. Nevertheless, The Sparks Brothers wrings ecstatic appreciation from a murderers’ row of commenters, ranging from obvious acolytes to friendly faces perhaps just passing by the studio that day. At its best, Edgar Wright’s passion project plays out like a star-studded listening party thrown by a manic superfan. Screens at Bridgeport, Cinema 21 and VOD.
☛DO: Outdoor Yoga at the Hoyt Arboretum The mainstreaming of yoga has given rise to all kinds of gimmicks—goat yoga! Chicken yoga! Death metal yoga!—but stretching and contorting among the redwoods and cherry trees of the Hoyt Arboretum sounds legitimately lovely, even if the only pose you know is “downward dog” because you heard it as a punchline in a Vince Vaughn movie or something. Instructor Brynna Hurwitz will lead a class every Thursday through the summer. Hoyt Arboretum, 4000 SW Fairview Blvd., 503-865-8733, hoytarboretum.org/learn/classes. 11:15 am every Thursday in summer. $8 per class.
IMDB
SEE: The Muppet Movie In Kermit the Frog’s universally beloved first feature film and origin story, our little green friend embarks on a cross-country road trip to Hollywood in search of stardom. Along the way, he meets a variety of fellow Muppets, including his love Miss Piggy, as well as an evil frog-legs restaurateur and Steve Martin as a short-shorts-wearing waiter. NW Film Center’s Drive-In at OMSI, 1945 SE Water Ave. 8:45 pm Thursday, July 8. $40 per car, $50 for trucks, vans and SUVs. Premium $60.
WARNER BROS.
SEE: Beetlejuice Watching old Tim Burton movies always comes with a twinge of regret, when you consider he’s spent the past two decades putting his considerable creative energy into mall-goth remakes of classic properties that absolutely did not need them. But there’s no way to ever be bummed out during a showing of Beetlejuice—33 years on, it’s still a manic blast from start to finish. It’s not Halloween, sure, but Michael Keaton going HAM on German expressionist scenery as a supernatural sex pest manipulating a recently dead couple into freeing him from netherworld purgatory is a marvel in any season. The movie screens as part of NW Film Center’s outdoor cinema series, held at the top of the Lloyd Center parking garage. Lloyd Center, 2201 Lloyd Center. 8:45 pm Saturday, July 10. $20. See nwfilm.org/film-series/cinema-unbound-summer-movies-open-air-experiences for tickets.
GO: Help and Spoon Benders For anyone who’s missed rowdy, sweaty shows, this is an ideal doubleheader. Though Kenton Club started holding socially distanced live shows on its outdoor patio last year, it hasn’t really been possible to let loose at concerts until this past week. The driving hardcore of Help, coupled with Spoon Benders’ snarling psych rock, should make for one hell of a cathartic release—after all, it’s been a year without shows for musicians, too. But please, if you’re not vaxxed, don’t jump in the pit. Kenton Club, 2025 N Kilpatrick St., kentonclub.com. 6 pm Saturday, July 10. $10. 21+. SEE: Edna Vazquez Edna Vazquez has a voice that can squeeze tears from a stone. First discovered via a televised Spanishlanguage talent competition, the Mexican-born singer-songwriter—who came to the U.S. after coming out to her parents as a teenager, eventually making her way to Oregon—has recorded in a variety of styles, and whether it’s tender Mexican folk songs, mariachi or rock ’n’ roll, her mournful alto is the centerpiece of whatever she does. A true Portland treasure, Vazquez performs Sunday after her scheduled concert was postponed by the heat wave. The Lot at Zidell Yards, 3030 S Moody Ave., thelotatzidellyards. com. 7 pm Sunday, July 11. $50-$75 per person. All tickets sold in 2-, 4- and 6-seat pods.
COURTESY OF HILLSBORO HOPS
GO: Hillsboro Hops vs. Vancouver Canadians Who needs Major League Baseball when you have the Hops? The Arizona Diamondbacks affiliates are the defending Northwest League champions, having won their third pennant in five years just before the pandemic canceled the 2020 season. So really, they’re about as close to the pros as you can get in the minors. And if we’re being honest, a baseball game is a baseball game, whether it’s in some shiny new stadium or humble Ron Tonkin Field. If you’ve never been to a Hops game, you’ll have extra chances this year: The team was recently promoted to Single A-Advanced status, expanding its total number of games from 76 to 132. That’s nearly double the hot dogs, double the beers and double the high-fives with Barley, the mascot that suspiciously resembles a nug of weed. Tonight, the team starts its home series against the dastardly Vancouver Canadians. Ron Tonkin Field, 4460 NE Century Blvd., Hillsboro, 503640-0887, milb.com/hillsboro. 7:05 pm Tuesday, July 13. $7-$50.
