#dazzleships records

[rockandrollportlandor]

DAZZLESHIPS RECORDS - “Raised by Women”

Note: normally, I don't even mention people's identity clusters in my reviews, because 90% of the time it's irrelevant to the music. However I wanted to preface this review with some of my thought about women in indie music, because this is a compilation which does stop and explicitly acknowlege the contributions of its musicians as women. By 2018, female musicians haven't just carved out a place for themselves in indie music--they're its driving force, and probably the only thing preventing the entire genre, which was for so many years dominated by white cishet collegiate and post-collegiate men, and which had never recovered from its brief heyday of dominance in the 1990's, from disintegrating into total irrelevance. This isn't to say that women in "the scene" are any less subject to the violence, offenses, and injustices that women have been subject to throughout human history. Going by the stats on assault, we have to assume that most male sexual assaulters continue to be protected in all social circles, even as many others are called out. Every manner of irritation still comes at women in indie circles. Seasoned musicians are given unsoliticed tips, male reviewers overtly or subtly focus on the artist's appearance over her music, and womanhood is frequently perceived as a genre unto itself, as the old maxim decries. The maginalization of women and, more broadly speaking, femme performativity in indie music isn't just bad for equity/equality, it's bad for music itself. And likewise, feminism is as important a practice in aesthetics as it is in politics. I don't want to miss out on a great experience of new music because I'm too busy staring at the ass of the person making it, or, on the other end of the spectrum, puffing up my ego because I fancy myself so enlightened to be enjoying this woman just for her music. I just want to hear the music, not myself. I hear myself all fucking day long. And I really hope I'm not rare in the world of indie rock, and the world generally. Women can shout until their voices give, but if men aren't going to finally let them into the spaces they're banned from, both physically and psychologically, and commit to cease a whole range of violent thought and behavior toward women, ranging from mere dismissal of their minds to actual murder, nothing's going to happen. Feminism is a task for everyone, and you don't have to march in a single protest or call out a creep online or whatever to do good work. The struggle in your own head, and how it plays out in small ways, might be your own greatest work. Or maybe, if you're Hunter Skowron of Dazzleships Records, you'll put out a compilation of some of Portland's choicest woman-fronted bands, and donate all the proceeds to Raphael House, a local non-profit providing a safe haven from domestic violence. Skowron has assembled a diverse collection of some of the choicest woman-fronted bands Portland's indie rock/pop scene has to offer. Though the excellent sequencing might make it less apparent, these artists have little to do with each other within the indie pop/rock spectrum and probably won't be together on the same compilation if it had a different theme, but this only makes it all the more interesting of a listen. It opens with the dark horses Skull Diver, who've generated signicant buzz since their arrival without--at least it appears to me--relying on the kind of neopotism we all know about... I know them best for their dirgey tragic numbers, but this tune, "Bad Star", feels more like Depeche Mode. Nonetheless, it still drenches you with the Skull Diver house mood of melancholic defiance, and it's a great way to open the record. Mini Blinds comes next, shrinking the paranoramic picture frame of Skull Diver to something more akin to an 18 inch cathode ray TV, a sound more like classic 80's and 90's indie pop. There's a bittersweet quality in singer Beth Ann Dear, and while song sounds kind of cute at first, the angst can be felt quietly rumbling beneath the surface. The title, "Happy" feels ironic, but I might be picking up the wrong vibes. Cat Hoch comes next, offering up a surprising pure pop tune rooted in very 80's-sounding synths, radically different from her early solo material, which was 60's-rooted, meandering, guitar-based psych pop well-suited to driving through the desert. This new track, "Say You Love Me", is bouncy and charming--you could almost imagine Jane Fonda using it as a background track for one of her aerobics videos. But what's most interesting is how Hoch's ethereal, almost completely breathy voice, a strength of her music from day one, has mostly remained the same in this new environment, where it's so different from what Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Debbie Gibson might do over such a backing track. It's a little lighter and freer than the old Hoch, but it retains a lot of that wide-eyed mystical aura, making for an oddly delightful confection. Natasha Kmeto comes next, one of the more high-profile artists in a city whose best acts are often content to never venture beyond the West Coast. "Your Girl" is a primo piece of contemporary electronic pop dreaminess that gives me the impression of a glacier slowly melting, becoming grander and grander as its heart shrinks more and more. It's the kind of song you listen to in your car when you're heartbroken, outside your ex's house to get the last of your stuff and you just can't go in because you're sobbing. Okay that was random, anyway... Rilla, a group I've been personally familiar for several years due to connections with the Toads, contributes "Side Sleeper", an excellent example of their unique sound, strongly focused on instrumental interactions between the two guitars and bass that remind me so much of the perky melodicism of 8-bit video games, but without the stiffness--actually, Rilla can be quite romantic, and this song is one of those. Voices, almost ghostly, drift in and out, abstract commentary on the web woven by the guitars. They're excellent at structuring songs, departing from verse-chorus-verse and often making it seem like the tunes have more parts than they really do. Call it sleight of time. Johanna Warren takes us on another 180 with a self-probing folk song, which feels to me, sonically at least, like a complement to the Natasha Kmeto song two tracks ago, but in an acoustic instead of electronic mode. Warren's voice lingers on each syllable of her lyrics, compelling as much with her phrasing as the pensive fingerpicked guitar and spooky piano notes do, and most of all the negative space that engulfs the song like mist. DANDAN returns us to the realm of synths with a mostly instrumental track that sounds like music in a groovy retro-futuristic lounge on the planet Saturn. I wonder if this band is familiar with Dick Hyman and his album "Moon Gas", because I'm getting hard vibes in that direction. Next is one of the best Blackwater Holylight, "Sunrise", which I've described in my recent review of their first album. Laura Palmer's Death Parade, whose frontwoman Laura Hopkins is also a member of Blackwater Holylight, brings of the rear of her other band's song, contributing "Scrollin". Driven by a harsh, spikey electric rhythm guitar, it's a tune of romantic frustration, building in tension as Hopkins increases the vulnerability and resentment in her voice before it trails down in abject defeat. Her lover is gone, leaving her to be "destroyed by the light of [her] phone", a thoroughly modern sort of misery. A quicky and satisfying piece of songwriting. Haste brings up the energy a bit with "Let's Play with Ourselves", pushed along by a modified "Be My Baby" or maybe "Maps" beat, bobbing up and down for the most part on two chords (save for a bridge), like a little boat at sea. Singer Jasmine Linee Wood delivers a sleepy but heartfelt performance playing off the bands's rhythm section provides the consistent pulse, conveying maybe the purest expression of melancholy on an album that seems suffused with that emotion. Sheers, on of the city's most mysterious and unique pop acts, closes the album with her harp-driven song "An Occasion", offering a fine example of her jazz-inflected curiosities. I've also written about her music at length recently, so I won't repeat here, except to say it's a major highlight of this album. It's really a perfect closer to this overcast hashish dream of a record, which should be a welcome companion to get you through the rest of this Northwest winter. As I said, melancholy is the predominant note mood-wise in this collection, but there are so many flavors and states of it that it doesn't really feel as monochomatic as you might think. How good of a represenation of women musicians in town is it? Fuck if I know. I do know every song is great, and every song was made by women, so take that for whatever, in the end, it really means. AN ADDITIONAL NOTE: This is a long meditative post because I've reached the end of a year in which I promised to center bands and artists who were not white, cishet, or male. I ended up, due perhaps to a lack of adventurousness on my part and Portland indie rock's already poor diversity, mostly writing about white cishet women, but regardless of who I was writing about I ended up appreciating all the more the contributions of non-white, non-cishet, non-male folks in our music community. Mostly, I wish i had written more of anything on the blog this year, but you know how shit goes. In 2019 I'm going to go back to writing about whoever moves me regardless of identity cluster. Restricting white cis men didn't didn't feel any different, mostly, but maybe it's not supposed to. It's probably true that I wrote about a bunch of people I would have put on the back burner, and that's pretty good.

[dhla]

Feeling introspective this afternoon - Dazzle Ships it is then . . . #OMD #orchestralmanoeuvresinthedark #dazzleships #romanceofthetelescope #geneticengineering #vinyl #album #record https://www.instagram.com/p/BnUGpoxggui/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=7ebhhz084r03

[addisongroove]

My next EP - Changa is out today on vinyl and MP3 ..buy link in my profile or ask your local record shop where the hell it is. @rwdfwd are also selling the vinyl on thier online shop. Thanks to everyone who supported from @djmoxie to @_benjib and many others.. We have a tasty video for it coming tomorrow thanks to my brother @dazzleship . #changa #addisongroove #vinyl #lovevinyl #dazzleship #recordstore

[tinymixtapes]

Watch: Ben Pagano & The Space Machine - “Killin’ It In The Kitchen”

Singer-songwriter Ben Pagano’s soulful, funky, and downright beautifully bonkers compositions will hit you like a ton of rainbow-colored bricks when you first hear them, to say nothing of that voice. I first saw Pagano perform years ago at Bushwick’s legendary Goodbye Blue Monday (RIP) open-mic nights, where all manner of freaks and wierdos would commingle and showcase some of the most original music and performances for anyone courageous and genuinely curious enough to seek them out, and I’ve been following his music ever since. In advance of his upcoming second album, due out April 24th on Dazzleships Records, simply titled Forms, Pagano and his band have very recently put out a video for single, “Killin’ It In The Kitchen,” which was filmed at a very familiar location in the neighborhood, and featuring cameos by some of its fixtures, have a look… http://j.mp/2lkAaJp

[independentartistbuzz]

Rosebug Releases Dreamy Debut, “Worst Way” Today

Rarely do bands so completely change the direction of sound— and do it so effortlessly — as indie punk band Rosebug. In the musical realm, Rosebug may have succeeded where others have failed, in authenticity.  

Their album “Worst Way" combines edgy instrumentals driven by electric organs, bass, and guitar sounds not to mention the beautifully laced vocal styling’s of Becca Chodorkoff, that easily surpass the average singer. 

The opening track, “Hello,” is riff driven, it’s fascinating, and it’s a punk-rock sociological moment in musical time that just feels good. “I am the One,” “Heart,” and “He doesn’t know,” are exhilarating and poignant additions to an already impressive music project. 

Pick up the record digitally or on cassette, here: https://dazzleshipsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/worst-way