$16 General Admission
$20 Day of Show
$28 VIP (seating in the first five rows in the center section - available in advance only)
The Back Fence PDX: MAINSTAGE show has been playing to packed good-looking audiences since 2008. The evening features local and out of town storytellers telling true personal tales based on the night’s theme. Former storytellers range from a blood-spatter expert, a pet photographer, a park ranger, funeral director, a former Scientologist, to scientists and doctors, to New York Times best-selling authors, film actors/writers/directors, and people we’ve met on the street. MAINSTAGE stories have never been told publicly. In some cases, not even to significant others.
21+, $8
Epic local bill of up-and-coming experimental rock talents!
Møtrik
Mothertapes
DAN DAN
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MOTRIK
https://motrik.bandcamp.com/
The beat is in 4/4 time and of moderate pace. The pattern is repeated each bar throughout the song. A splash or crash cymbal is often hit at the beginning bar of a verse or chorus.
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MOTHERTAPES
https://www.mothertapesmusic.com/
At the heart of Mothertapes' music lies vivid melodic themes, heavy beats, and lush layers of programmed and live-looped instrumentation wrapped around intense guitar hooks and vocals. A live Mothertapes performance is an impressive show of workmanship in which Pete Bosack and Tommy Franzen build each song from the ground up, creating the sonic footprint of a much larger band. Rather than ceding control to the bloodless clockwork of sequenced loops, the band breathes life into the technology, eliciting an elastic, dynamic quality that has drawn the admiration of critics and earned the band a loyal following.
The creative collaboration of Pete Bosack and Tommy Franzen is entering its second decade. From the beginning, they recognized in each other an experimental spirit and strong sense of purpose rooted in a commitment to precision and musicianship. Their early garage jams led to the formation of their first band, Wax Fingers, and a debut album soon followed.
When Wax Fingers lost their bassist and, eventually, their second guitarist, Bosack and Franzen were back at a square one. Instead of recruiting new members, they chose to wipe the slate clean and double down on their original partnership, determined to fully realize its promise. They launched a new two-man band, Mothertapes, and began working on all-new material that would push their unique, progressive pop sound to new heights.
Astute listeners will notice the influence of artists as varied as Animal Collective, Radiohead,Matmos, St. Vincent, Battles, and Maps and Atlases. But such comparisons serve only as reference points for this thoroughly original duo. After ten years of collaboration, Bosack and Franzen regard Mothertapes as the culmination of their work together, a breakthrough project resulting in forward-looking music that is both artistically ambitious and highly accessible.
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DAN DAN
A trio consisting of spacey, densely-layered synth riffs accompanied by live drums, Dan Dan has been called 'soundtrack-y prog' or 'ambient jam synth' among other things. With a wide variety of influences, Dan Dan manages to forge a sound somewhere between the robotic and the psychedelic while keeping a high level of energy.
Jackson Phillips understands the value of proper headspace. The California based vocalist/multi-instrumentalist behind Day Wave has a knack for carving out room for his talents to grow, both in his life and in his music. Trained as a jazz drummer in his youth, Phillips studied the instrument at the esteemed Berklee College of Music before switching gears to learn production and recording. Infused with a new sense of sonic understanding, he began to focus on songwriting, and learned to dial back the complex scholastic headiness of sound in favor of a more honed in, precise, and felt outlet. The result is Day Wave’s unique brand of euphoric purity.
A truly evolutionary solo project, Day Wave’s music is earnest, guitar-based dream pop with electronic undertones, propelled by Phillips’s self-dissecting lyrics and knack for melancholy melody. Reminiscent of The Postal Service, Real Estate, DIIV, Nada Surf, more, its origin as a lo-fi emotional exercise has expanded to a tighter, better realized production while maintaining its stripped back aesthetic. But Day Wave is not emo, to be sure: it’s just honest.
“The main idea with the music is to grow, sonically and in every way, and that’s kind of why it started out small and lo-fi—so there was room to grow,” Phillips says. “I wanted to give myself headroom so the future projects could be taken somewhere.”
Following his time in Boston at Berklee, the 27-year-old Phillips, a native of Northern California’s Marin County, spent some time in New York and Los Angeles before moving to Oakland and starting Day Wave in the summer of 2014. He bought his first guitar and a drum machine and began looking at music from the perspective of a songwriter, as opposed to that of a specialist, with the aim of simplification foremost in his mind. At times overwhelmed by the limitless scope of music software and machines, Phillips found the new approach medicinal.
“You can lose the music when you get so caught up in all the technology,” he says. “I was kind of burnt out and I wanted to approach it from a different angle. I was only using synthesizers, still new to everything beyond just being a drummer. I was doing the same thing over and over again. I kind of boxed myself into this one way of creating songs, so I bought a guitar to simplify things.”
He finished his first batch of songs in November of 2014, eventually self-releasing an EP called Headcase. He called the project Day Wave as a nod to what the finished music sounded like, and slowly started to pick up buzz on Soundcloud and from blogs. Empowered by the act of creating music with only himself to please, Phillips flourished.
“I was just trying to make something that I really liked,” he says. “I think in the previous years I wasn’t confident and was second-guessing myself because I’d never made songs before. With Day Wave, I went back to my 15-year-old self, who was just listening to tons of Pink Floyd and prog rock. ‘This is what I think is cool. Who cares if anyone else likes it?’”
Headcase, with the help of its catchy debut single “Drag” that was premiered in April 2015 by influential LA radio station KCRW, gathered acclaim throughout that year. Sirius Alt Nation and XMU, Beats 1, and Morning Becomes Eclectic got behind the track, helping Day Wave earn over three million cumulative plays online. In between touring with the likes of Albert Hammond Jr. and Blonde Redhead, Phillips penned his second EP, Hard To Read, culminating with a European tour and headlining stint in the US.
Now, Day Wave is working on its debut full-length album, to be release in 2017 by Harvest Records. Although Phillips has proven to be his own best critic and driving engine, he has enlisted the help of Mark Ranken, the celebrated engineer known for his work with Paul Epworth (Adele, Bloc Party, Queens of the Stone Age), to help give his music a sonic step-up in order to properly begin to fill its unlimited headspace and potential.
“Day Wave’s sound is very pop at its core, so I think it could appeal to a lot of people,” Phillips says. “I’m not trying to do that as much as I am making the music the way I’d naturally make it, and it would be cool if the project could just grow. That was always the goal: To have it build slowly over time. If you want to do it right, you’ve got to do it over time. I want to get more comfortable with every step.”
Their sophomore album Write In will be released on April 7th through Bar/None in US. The record was recorded in the band’s own studio above a now-abandoned bookshop, then finished and mixed with Adam Lasus at his LA home studio. It features artwork from the band’s own Jon EE Allan. Write In sets its stall out as an outward looking, inventive, and thoughtful progression from their debut. Drawing on an array of influences including Roxy Music, The Beach Boys, Randy Newman, Sonic Youth, Big Star and Pierre Cavalli, the direction is best summed up by Jon EE Allan; “I’d like to think this record looks outside the little American alt-rock sphere we were looking in on. I think we used to be very afraid of being earnest. And now we’re able to be tender or heartfelt without feeling too guilty about it. This record cost us about £500 to make, and that was mainly spent on an 8 track tape recorder and a dehumidifier. We self-produced it in our studio [the affectionately named 'Jelly Boy Studios', where the band also recorded their debut, 'Weird Little Birthday']. The building's being redeveloped at the end of the year, so this is the last record we'll make there, which feels like the end of a chapter for us.”
Ahead of the album release, new UK single “Falling Down” now has an official video, a disorientating and retro 7-minute spectacle, as guitarist Benji Compston explains; “A friend of ours manages a cinema (shoutout Nyla!) and she gets free use of it every Monday night when the public have left. We showed up at midnight with an old TV and some musical equipment and a vague plan to shoot a Spiegel Im Spiegel effect with the cinema screens. Special credit should probably also go to the coffee machine.”
Happyness will be playing SXSW and have announced an extra US date ahead of a full North American headline tour in the Spring. Benji says, “These shows are our first US dates for a while now, and for the first time we'll have two albums to play from so we're looking forward to it a lot. We've got a lot of expensive ideas for stage props that we probably won't be able to realize by then.”
AAN
Aan is a four piece experimental pop project exploring tone and texture through the guise of a rock outfit. Bud Wilson has been writing and recording under this moniker for over seven years, though its first proper LP was released in February of 2014 (Amor Ad Nauseum). Live, the band exhumes a catharsis that feels almost tangible, reworking and deconstructing the recorded material to form a sort of hyper version of its template.
The current lineup of musicians includes Lane Barrington of the electronic project Machinedrum hammering out distracted rhythms while bassist Travis Leipzig roots the groove with wobbling, repetitive riffs. Gabriel Nardin plays guitar and key lines in tandem with Bud's meandering leads, creating something akin to Weezer filtered through side A of Tago Mago or Faust IV.
The band has shared the stage with myriad indie stalwarts and garnered national praise for both their music and videos. The enthusiasm to create new sounding music has never been stronger for the group and 2015 looks to produce another LP of original, forward thinking sounds.
Rodriguez, the legendary singer-songwriter known only by his surname, is a self-taught guitarist. He began performing in bars and clubs around the city of Detroit in the 1960s, as the city suffered post-industrial urban decay. It was there that he recorded two studio albums, Cold Fact in 1969 and Coming from Reality in 1971. These compositions went unnoticed in the U.S. and Rodriguez eventually turned his efforts elsewhere, earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Wayne State University, running for political office and working construction and factory jobs to support his family.
In the mid-1970s, his music gained airplay in Australia and New Zealand and he toured the area finding limited success as an overseas performer.
Rodriguez was unaware that he had reached legendary folk-rock super stardom status in South Africa, where mistaken rumors circulated that he had perished. As it turns out, South African anti-Apartheid activists and musicians alike were inspired by his counterculture lyrics.
In the late 1990s, South African fans finally sought him out, leading to the unanticipated renaissance of his music career. Their story is told in the 2012 Oscar award-winning documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, which has given Rodríguez a new measure of fame in the U.S. and his music is now reaching audiences worldwide.
Rodriguez now tours extensively in South Africa, Australia, Europe, and the U.S., where he takes thoughtful appreciation in greeting longtime fans, and a new generation of listeners who find common ground in his music. His albums, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality have since been re-released on Light in the Attic records and the Searching for Sugar Man soundtrack is available on Sony Legacy. International media attention and accolades have since been bestowed upon both the film and the music.
He has perhaps one of the most unique true stories of fleeting fame finally realized. Rodriguez is enjoying the collective heartfelt dream of a musician, beating the odds and finding a place in music history. With a music career that has withstood the test of time; the story of Rodriguez is one of sweet success.
Digable Planets
8 p.m. doors, 9 p.m. show
All ages welcome
$29.50 advance, $32 day of show (VIP tickets available)
Digable Planets
Alternative hip-hop trio, Mary Ann "Ladybug Mecca" Vieira, Craig "Doodlebug" Irving and Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler have reunited! Their debut album Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) in 1993 featured crossover hit, "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" earning a Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. That, plus Blowout Comb in 1994, are both hip-hop classics. It's finally time for a Digable Planets reunion and fans are ready. Reunited and it feels sooo good!
A tribute to director Jonathan Demme (1944-2017).
Sonic Cinema presents STOP MAKING SENSE (1984). Jonathan Demme captures the frantic energy of Talking Heads in this concert movie shot at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in 1983. The band's frontman, David Byrne, first appears on an empty stage, armed with only an acoustic guitar, and is gradually joined by bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz, keyboardist Jerry Harrison and a cadre of backup singers as they perform the band's hits, culminating in an iconic performance featuring Byrne in an enormous suit.
Sponsored by XRAY FM, Music Millennium and Lagunitas Brewing.
Passes Accepted: Guest Pass and Member Guest Pass.
Hoops, a Bloomington, Indiana based four-piece, conjures the idea of breezy afternoons and sticky summer nights - both in name and sound. Not named for the sweltering blacktop accompaniment, nor the waist- slinging hobby, but for hoop houses in the greenhouses where founding member Drew worked in high school. All told, Hoops began as Drew's solo ambient project. Over the course of 2014's (particularly sweltering) summer in Bloomington, Hoops naturally filled out into a four-piece lineup featuring; Drew Auscherman, Kevin Krauter, Keagan Beresford, and James Harris.
To date, Hoops has self-released three tapes which draw on influences such as Prefab Sprout and The Clientele. After playing occasional shows around Indiana, the guys slowly began taking weekend trips to nearby midwestern cities. Early adopters My Old Kentucky Blog and Gorilla vs. Bear were soon joined by the likes of FADER, Gold Flake Paint, NME and more in their praise of Hoops.
Still ingrained in the Bloomington music scene (Drew plays in Gum, Daguerreotype, Manneqin), their tapes are available to stream on YouTube - as well as other bands' tapes from around town. Hoops recently pressed "Tape #3" which contains all three tapes in one and is available to order by emailing the band.
Hoops self-titled EP is due out August 26th on Fat Possum.
THE FAMILY CREST
The brainchild of McCormick, The Family Crest was started as a recording project in 2009 with co-founder John Seeterlin (bass). “We were in another band and had become disillusioned about what that band had become about,” explains McCormick. “Everyone wanted to be rock stars at the expense of the music. John and I were actually planning on leaving music at that point because we wanted something that in ten years we could be proud of.”
Instead of leaving music, they set out to reinvent how it could be created, starting The Family Crest. “We always liked making music with people -- getting a bunch of people together and singing. So we put ads everywhere,” says McCormick. “We posted on Craigslist and emailed old friends from school.” The outcome was greater than the original duo imagined, with 80 people credited on the first recording the band produced. From that a band emerged, at the urging of the guest musicians, who wanted to hear the songs performed live. “We’ve worked with a lot of conservatory students as well as people who just sing in the shower,” McCormick adds. “It became a lot about giving these people a chance to express themselves without being locked into a commitment.”
Now a seven-piece core band, boasting over 400 “Extended Family” members, The Family Crest will release Beneath the Brine in February 2014 on Tender Loving Empire. Just with its previous recordings, the San Francisco band set out to capture a plethora of instruments -- including bassoon, vibraphone and French horn -- in unique places, such as living rooms, churches and cafes across the West Coast.
Following on the heels of last summer’s The Headwinds EP (which earned fans in WXPN and Paste), Beneath the Brine shows that McCormick’s ambition was well placed. The expansive breadth of arrangements – from dark, classical romanticism (“Beneath the Brine”) to horn-laden sounds akin to the Roaring 20s (“Howl”) -- are complemented by the incredible range of McCormick’s voice. Beneath the Brine also showcases The Family Crest’s ability to infuse pop into complex arrangements, with songs like “Love Don’t Go” and “The World.” The album is a sweeping soundscape befitting the oceanic theme of the title and what SPIN notes as “ambition wide enough to swallow you whole.”
It has also proven The Family Crest’s belief that anyone can be musical when given the opportunity. “We live in a very disconnected age,” notes Laura Bergmann (flute/keys), “so it’s a really special experience to have a recording session in a cafe that’s open to the public and to sing next to people you’ve never met before, doing something together that’s tangible and very meaningful.”
“When I listen to the record,” adds McCormick, “it’s like listening to the last two years of my life. All of my best friends that I’ve met are in one place, together.”
TREVOR SENSOR
The two began to fuse in his early songwriting, which was recorded between stints as a dish-washer in the local bar and grill ("you learn a lot from the ex-junkies who make up the kitchen staff," he says now). Among the early results are startling debut single 'The Reaper Man', an ambiguous encounter with death driven by Sensor's raw but soulful voice ("Oh here's the reaper man, he's looking after me / Oh here's the reaper man, he's coming to take me"). Coloured by local love affairs, 50s TV and the mysticism of the Midwest, flip-side 'Villains and Preachers' is a similarly outsider's vision of small-town suburbia, from which Trevor Sensor has emerged one of the most striking new finds of the year.
Portland’s newest (or oldest, depending on how you look at it) music festival has unveiled it’s first lineup. “What Was Sound” will take place May 27th at the Portland Waterfront, as part of the Portland Rose Festival’s music programming. The fest (put on by our own marketing wing, Sub Rosa Curation), features a lineup of DIIV, Woods, El Ten Eleven, Fruit Bats, Bed., Small Leaks Sink Ships, Jujuba, with more announcements on the way! Tickets are only $28 and get you access to the CityFair (who doesn’t like a carnival?), and DIIV hasn’t played Portland in 5 years (if you don’t count Pickathon). Links to tickets here.
The opening weekend lineup... 
McMenamins, StarChile, WE 96.3, Pabst Blue Ribbon & XRAY FM Present: MIC CHECK
Mic Check is a Hip Hop Showcase every last Thursday of the month at White Eagle, with Live performances, drink specials and good vibes!
WE 96.3 we be in the building filming the event and you can watch it on their website www.we963pdx.com as well as the Mic Check
Youtube page:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2cHeUlJhhCirZI1rTHGRnw
THURSDAY MAY 25TH:
Special Guests...
BROOKFIELD DUCE
MIGHTY
SAMUEL THE 1ST
Hosted by StarChile
Music by Trox
Dooors @ 9pm, Show starts at 10pm...
21 and over, Tickets: $7 @ the Door
Led by high school senior Lindsey Jordan, last year Maryland three-piece Snail Mail released an impressive debut EP last year, Habit. It’s six tracks of lo-fi indie rock that perfectly captures the feeling of dragging your feet around your hometown and praying you don’t get stuck there for good.
Girlpool is a Los Angeles based two piece made up of Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad. Having met at local DIY venue the Smell, the two quickly grew very close. Their sound is comprised only of a guitar, bass and vocal harmonies. The band uses this bare bones instrumentation to accentuate their vulnerable yet powerful lyrics to create honest pieces, tackling concepts ranging from awareness and respect to the simple feeling of being alone at a show.
Máscaras, comprised of three Portland music scene veterans (members of Sun Angle, Deer or the Doe, O Bruxo, Cat Hoch, Paper/Upper/Cuts, and literally dozens of others), is what happens when an off-the-cuff jam session between friends really, really works. Even in its recorded form, “it’s a jam with themes that live and breathe,” the band says, “leaving room for the unexpected.” The trio, comprised of Papi Fimbres (drums), Theo Craig (bass), and Carlos Segovia (guitar), plays heavy, propellant psychedelic music with surf-rock twang and mathy sensibilities. They call it “maximalist indigenous psych,” and while it’s not exactly the kind of music that one would normally identify with Portland—these are, after all, three brown dudes in the whitest city in America—they have become local favorites since their low-key formation in 2013, placing in the top 3 of Willamette Week’s prestigious annual Best New Band Poll.
Jo Passed is an emergent project by songwriter/vocalist/producer/multi-instrumentalist, Joseph Hirabayashi. Joseph formerly played in Vancouver based neo-psychedelic band Sprïng, which formed out of the disbanding of pronk experimental punk band, SSRIs. Jo Passed is always on tour, look for shows.
$9
https://www.facebook.com/events/1968656523363233/
Máscaras:
https://mascaras.bandcamp.com/
Jo Passed:
https://jopassed.bandcamp.com/
Laser Background:
https://laserbackground.bandcamp.com/
Bitch'n:
https://bitchn.bandcamp.com/releases
The Black United Fund is having their annual 2017 Scholarship Awards Luncheon which brings together community leaders, university and college partners, students, parents, school officials, and community members. Making this event a true community-wide celebration for Oregon and SW Washington students embarking on their college journey.
For information on sponsorship or table hosting contact our Development Team at development@bufor.org
"The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself."
-Dwayne Johnson
Matthew Logan Vasquez is feeling optimistic.
That’s not necessarily apparent the first time you spin his new full-length solo album. Each track on Matthew Logan Does What He Wants feels urgent and intense. Impatient landlords, financial woes and other frustrations fan the agitation embedded in the opening track, “Same.” Isolation darkens the brooding images of “From Behind The Glass.” Death takes a bow on “The Fighter.” Vasquez can’t help but juxtapose the celebration of “Fatherhood” with a lament that “we ain’t got the money to pay the hospital.”
The music enhances this impression. As fans of his work with Delta Spirit and Middle Brother know well, Vasquez knows how to fuse passion and poetry in his writing and then ignite this volatile mix with extraordinarily expressive singing. In this sense he stands as a peer and a worthy successor to those who influenced him as an up-and-coming artist — Neil Young, Kurt Cobain, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed and others often mentioned, none of them known for their upbeat, sunny lyrics.
“My point is that life is a struggle,” Vasquez continues. “But how can you have optimism and hope if you don’t have something negative? Context is what makes it meaningful.”
For Vasquez, context involves drawing from dramatically different settings. Growing up in Austin Texas and along the California coast, hunkering down for years in Brooklyn as he finessed his music in a more pressurized urban context and then heading back to Austin to put all the pieces together, he took note of the differences and similarities these places offered. During much of that time he channeled his experiences into Delta Spirit, whose albums inspired critics to laud the band as “restless and defiant” (Paste), its music infused by “waves of measured ferocity” (Uncut) and “significant depth” (Austin Chronicle).
To keep his path clear and work on his own terms, Vasquez built a studio in his home for this past year — a trailer parked about an hour west of Austin. Here, in Texas Hill Country, surrounded by evergreen oak trees, he wrote and recorded basic tracks and then brought in singer Kam Franklin from The Suffers, Shakey Graves drummer Christopher Booshada and Jud Johnson of A. Sinclair to add parts as needed. For backup vocals and string parts, he worked long-distance via sound files with the Parkington Sisters, who he performed with during a Middle Brother set at last year’s Newport Folk Festival. “They performed a miracle, giving me a 3-D depth that makes the tracks they appear on jump out of the speakers,” he insists.
In final form, Does What He Wants is like a hall of mirrors, each capturing a different image of one self-aware and restlessly creative individual. This music is diverse yet unified, which of course was a priority for its author.
And, in the end, it turns out to feel pretty optimistic after all — a perfect statement for these times and possibly for some time to come.
HOLOCENE AND XRAY.FM PRESENT...
WILD COMBINATION: A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO ARTHUR RUSSELL
CHANTI DARLING, KARL KLING, GOLD CASIO, CASPAR SONNET, NOAH BERNSTEIN, JOHN NIEKRASZ, JONATHAN SIELAFF, MOOREA MASA, DJ HONEST JOHN, DJ SET BY STEVE KNUTSON (AUDIKA RECORDS), LECTURE BY MATT MARBLE, VISUALS BY SHAWN CREEDEN
SUN MAY 21
7:30 PM
$8.00 - $10.00
TICKETS
This event is 21 and over
Join us in honoring this visionary's memory on his birthday! An evening of live cover song sets, a lecture and DJ sets. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Cascade AIDS Project.
3 Days in Portland featuring AMINE
It all started in Portland, OR...
Now, Portland isn't traditionally referred to as a hotbed of hip-hop like Brooklyn or Compton is, but Aminé could very well change that perception.
"You don't ever think of a rapper or even a black guy coming out of Portland," he asserts. "That's just not a thing! However, there's a fairly diverse subculture in the city that few people know about. It's very different from what you would expect."
However, everything he does defies expectations. The rapper, artist, and director draws equal influence from his parents' Ethiopian heritage as he does from trailblazers such as Kanye West and André 3000. He's more likely to record in a remote AirBNB'ed wilderness cabin than he is in a posh studio, and he cites Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson as major inspirations. Building on a lifelong passion for music, he began recording in high school and quietly sharpening his mic skills. While attending Portland State University, he released his 2015 project Calling Brio.
Merging visual lyricism, swaggering production, and his clever, catchy bars, it became a phenomenon on Soundcloud, racking up over 1 million+ plays. In addition to praise from Pigeons & Planes, HypeTrak, and more, Complex spotlighted him as "one of the artists we're certainly checking for this year."
"I'm a fan of all genres," he explains. "My parents always played African music and Bob Marley. Then, I grew up on everything from Erykah Badu to John Mayer. I want to do something that reflects this diversity. My songs need to be good for the listener personally."
Representing that mosaic style, his 2016 single "Caroline" struts through a funked-up tribal bounce with the kind of grit and gusto that'd make Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega proud. Upon release, it quickly caught fire, garnering 10 million-plus Spotify streams, 8 million-plus Soundcloud plays, and 4 million-plus YouTube/VEVO views as well as reaching #1 on Spotify's Global Viral Top 50, #1 on the US Viral Top 50, and #1 on the Canada Viral Top 50. As the track took off, he inked a deal with Republic Records.
"With ‘Caroline,' I wanted to make an encouraging and fun record," Aminé goes on. "It really happened in the moment, and it's a feel good song."
It's also just the beginning. Aminé has a lot more surprises up his sleeve for Portland, hip-hop, and the world at large.
"I never want a basic reaction," he leaves off. "I want you to always have questions. I hope to challenge listeners to wonder why. Those are the artists I care about."
A2
Enigmatic rapper and producer A2 makes music that matters. Whether writing over soulful electronica or woozy R&B, the 26 year-old creates considered compositions bound by a sense of mystery, introspection and a streak of vulnerability.
To listen to A2 is to take a surreal journey through sensual soundscapes often unexplored; this is make-out, make-up, break-up music set to a rhythm and tempo of A2's very own. This is cinematic music that has something to say, and A2 says it beautifully, with a subtlety rarely found within such obviously killer, yet brilliantly understated, pop tunes.
Raised in Croydon, he points out the manor made the man and the musician. "I'm inspired by my estate," he says, slowly, of his influences. "My area and my environment definitely pays a part in who I am and the music that I make. My music is also based around conversations that I might have with a girl, or my mum, or my friends. I take pieces of a conversation and subliminally drop it into a song."
A2 and his two sisters were bought up by his mum, and she encouraged her children's musical inclinations. He learnt piano and would spend a lot of time listening to his mum and older sisters playing R&B, Jazz and Blues, trying to imitate them on the piano or keys. You can catch glimpses of those riffs within his own music, but as a South London boy he was also naturally drawn towards Battersea's So Solid, Stockwell Grime producer and MC Dot Rotten and seminal grime track, ‘Creeper', over which A2 and his mates began to practice MCing.
Though he's a British rhymer bought up around Rap and Grime, he gravitated naturally towards calmer compositions. "I just wanted something a bit quieter, more chill," he points out. "I was done with all the noise, you know? I wanted to create music that was much more about easy listening, dark in its own way, but enjoyable." Over the years, he's perfected his craft, working hard to learn the nuances within producing, engineering and songwriting; this is a multi-talented man who is able to move easily between various disciplines.
With his LP due to release in Spring 17; Blue which is the acronym for 'Before Love Undoes Everything' has massive support behind it. Partnering up with Beats, Boiler Room and being named on Red Bull's Sound Select 2017 - A2 is sure to deliver a remarkable project tapping into new audiences.
Last year we saw him perform at wireless, selling out a second headline show at XOYO and releasing a teaser EP in November called 'More Sleep 2' which A2 describes as "a wake up call" taking his listeners on a journey from 'More Sleep' which was "a period I was working late making songs but More Sleep 2 was me realising my dreams are reality so it's an oxymoron.. kind of". This year we have seen A2 premiere "a moving photograph" via highsnobiety 'X2', then later featured on the rising platform Colors Berlin.
With performances scheduled around the the world, 2017 is shaping up to be the year of A2. He's clearly a highly determined individual keen to make his mark on music in his own way, and on his own terms. "I want to be known as a master of my craft, and I want to create moments," says A2. "A lot of people don't seem to make music for the right reasons, or in the right way. I do this 100% for the love of music and art - that is what separates me for everyone else." A2's artistry isn't about chasing views, likes and retweets, it's about crafting a career within the creative realm that can last through generations. "This is about authenticity and longevity. Everything I do is about the passion that I put into it."
The Last Artful, Dodgr
Sometimes in life, you come across a voice so present and singular in its tone that it makes your entire world stop for a moment and all the hairs on your neck stand up. The Last Artful, Dodgr has proven to be one such phenomenon.
Born in Los Angeles and currently inhabiting Portland, Oregon - Dodgr's own unique brand of rap-singing, made up of casually delivered triple entendres, unforgettable melodies and an ever-changing stream of cadences, has begun to spread like a wildfire. From her noteworthy singles "Squadron" and "Oofda" topping Spotify charts, to her manifested-thru-song appearance on the legendary Sway In The Morning radio show, everything has been coming up Dodgr the last few years. And really, she's only just getting started - with all of that leading up to her collaborative concept album, Bone Music, with producer Neill Von Tally, released in early 2017 to critical acclaim from Pitchfork and fanfare alike.
She'll be pushing things even further in all directions this year with her upcoming debut solo album on Fresh Selects.