Free Music Archive - KBOO Blog

CTV

2010-03-15T07:07:22-04:00

Ranging from the melodic to the absurd, CTV is Christian Television is Joshua Inwood. Currently residing in Portland Oregon, CTV mixes, makes, tapes and tempers on his keyboards and laptops. Included in his soundscapes you can hear television chefs whirring chocolate mousse while simultaneously tasting a sweet absence of linear rhythms.

BOOM!

2010-03-18T20:03:52-04:00

BOOM! is a band, loud with shoes kicking out from underneath skateboards down Southeast Portland neighborhoods. These boys pile into cars, packing their gear and gritting their teeth to the rain on the way to their next sweaty house show. With their shredding guitars and hard skipping beats, BOOM! is like a birthday present that explodes in your face.

BOOM! comes to you here with 3 songs, all recently minted this past winter on their first west coast tour. Be sure to keep an eye on Gnar Tapes at www.gnartapesandshit.com for their soon-to-be-released (and limited edition) cassette.

Damn Dirty Apes

2010-02-19T19:40:36-05:00

For a band moving from Tallahassee, FL, to Portland, OR, it helps to have influences ranging from The Avett Brothers to Talking Heads.

Recent transplants to the Rose City, the Damn Dirty Apes were great enough to come into the KBOO studios and grace our late-night listeners with their Rock, Blues, Psychedelic fusion.

KBOO is happy to offer the night's proformance in its entirity, here at the Free Music Archive.

KBOO Best of 2009 [mix]

2010-12-29T16:52:45-05:00

With the launch of the Free Music Archive, we here at KBOO were very excited to see what performances and new albums 2009 would bring to us to sharewith you. Portland, Oregon - once referred to as "Little Beirut" by a former president - is such a "hot bed" of emerging music that we're forming a new Axis of Music. We've even got secrect training camps where musicians are weened into artistic brilliance before wreaking havoc on the rest of the world.

Don't tell anyone but one of these camps is right inside our studio, where we've been able to record The Taxpayers, Nick Jaina, The Quadraphonnes, The Mint Chicks, Doug and Judy Smith, and Golden Retriever.

Aside from our rouge station, a popular breeding ground for these extremists has been the PDX Pop Now! music festival. Entirely volunteer-run, the festival entered its sixth year with performances by Dirty Mittens and Guidance Counselor. Jared Mees & the Grown Children played a befefit show for the festival and Thavious Beck headlined a Black Electro benefit for KBOO.

New albums from The Underscore Orchestra, MEGACHURCH, Finn Riggins, World's Greatest Ghosts, and Leviethan round out our mix. There's way too much for us to highlight here, and even more we're still hoping to upload, but it's a good taste of what's brewing...

World's Greatest Ghosts

2010-01-15T13:15:48-05:00

No Magick, the first full-length album from World's Greatest Ghosts is a nod to childhood narratives of make-believe monsters and plywood clubhouses. With lyrics referencing ghouls chasing you through mazes and houses sinking in quicksand, this album presents its nostalgic concepts with a dice-throwing Dungeon and Dragons filter. Friends reliving their clubhouse fantasies may not be such an abstract concept for this group. The Ghosts comprise of two brothers, Casey and Jesse Laney, and a college sweetheart, Emily Laney (Jesse's wife). Brandon Anderson has been with the group since its beginnings in the deep South. And now in Portland, Eric Ambrosius has joined them, replacing their long-time drummer. No Magick is produced by the Portland label Lucky Madison, run by local rocker Kevin O'Connor from the dynamic group, Talkedemonic. WWG will be playing this year's SXSW festival in Austin Texas, and be sure to check out their Myspace page at www.myspace.com/worldsgreatestghosts for updates. Long live D'n'D synth-rock.

Dirty Mittens

2009-11-29T21:15:21-05:00

In a city and an age where most pop is slanting towards minimalism and meticulously crafted apathy, the Portland band Dirty Mittens is a monstrous force of breezy pop goodness. With an ever-growing line up of guitars and horns and keyboards backing Chelsea Morrisey’s powerhouse of a voice, the band floods the stage with catchy, danceable hooks and hopelessly romantic lyrics.

I first saw the Dirty Mittens when they killed with the opening set at the 2009 PDX POP NOW music fest. It brings me great pleasure to release that performance now, under Creative Commons, with the Free Music Archive.

The Mint Chicks

2009-11-29T21:18:22-05:00

There are many ways to generate press and mythos for a band, but one of the most drastic might be to win a fistful of national awards from your home country of New Zealand, and then promptly jump ship for a small, little known town in the Pacific Northwest.

That tactic seems to be working for the now Portland based Rock/Dance Pop band, The Mint Chicks. The self described "troublegum" band has been taking advantage of their newfound relative obscurity to mix up their style with a new level of experimentation, and wow unexpecting audiences with their wild live shows.

Fresh Body Shop

2009-11-29T21:15:40-05:00

The easiest things to do when listening to Pedro Rousseau’s one-man band out of Nantes, France--besides rocking out--is to make comparisons to Nine Inch Nails. And while the influences are clearly there, Fresh Body Shop really comes into its own with its latest release, The Ugly Army.

The album takes all the industrial sounds and dark lyrics you might expect from a Trent Reznor release, and mixes them up with the varied beats and innovative arrangements of some of the best one-man composers.

And, as with all of Rousseau’s FBS work, the album is released under Creative Commons.

The Taxpayers

2009-11-29T21:18:30-05:00

Probably the best aspect of The Taxpayers is that's it's damn near impossible to tell what they're going to do next. Where as most bands see the words Folk Punk as a genre, this band from Portland, Oregon, seems to take them as an open-ended, Beck-like license to strip two vast histories of sound down to their barest essentials, and mix them back together into super-catchy, genre-bending anthems about failed revolutions, and lives well wasted, that demand to be shouted out at a drunken live show in your neighbor’s basement.

Also: they have a song called Zombie Lesbian Stripper Cops.

MEGA*CHURCH INSPIRES!!!

2009-11-29T21:16:31-05:00

In these times of chaos, uncertainty, war and rumors of war, fear, doubt, and CHANGE, comes a band to lift our spirits, raise our confidence and feed us love via hard dance beats and psychedelic-electronic production. This band is MEGA*CHURCH. Just listen to "You Got the Power!" and tell me you wont be humming it down the street for the next week with a great smile, stoked to make the best of your day.

The title track, "Us>", is a hip hop inspired power house, reminding how to see each other without our egos flyin'. The "2 nite and 4 eva Sermon" is a reminder of everything you learned reading the great religious texts but palatable for the times we're in. "Hypergospel" is another dance floor power pop tune laying down the mission.

Sure, MEGA*CHURCH could become a cult, but these boys and girls aren't trying to take your mind away. To the contrary, they're reminding use of the power we'll be needing in our age of chaos. Thank your lucky stars that someone in Pop music cares about something beyond themselves.

LOVE - SEAN

Thavious Beck Live at Holocene

2009-11-29T21:18:11-05:00

Composer of mercurial soundtracks for uncertain times, Thavius Beck conjoins various strains of electronic music to arrive at a daringly ambitious sound. He recently joined a lineup of local artists to celebrate black electronic music and benefit KBOO at Holocene in Portland, Oregon.

Joining him were Rasheeda Ameera, Cheetah Finess, and Ayam in a night curated by KBOO's Deena B of The Soundbox

Listen to the whole set here.

Tragedy Live on KBOO

2009-11-29T21:18:39-05:00

When you are a punk from Portland, and you go almost anywhere else, the first band people bring up is usually Tragedy. The fact that they were my neighbors got me free coffee for 6 months in Chicago. They played on our radio show, Life During Wartime, (every Wednesday night from 11 pm until 1 am (PDT), on KBOO 90.7 FM, in Portland, OR) on April 13, 2005.

They were really loud, really great, and then Todd played records for an hour. No one else would talk. We don't have a copy of that part of the show, but I learned about a lot of bands that night. Thanks Trag!

Click for album

On Twitter and your iPhone!

2009-04-03T17:51:34-04:00

Thanks to the Public Radio Exchange, you can now listen to KBOO on your iPhone or iPod Touch via the Public Radio Tuner. The tuner is an application with a sleek new look and state-of-the-art engineering allowing you to stream a high-quality verision of KBOO's signal. We're happy to make KBOO available through this application and appreciate your membership, which allows us to continue our technological advances.

We're also continuing to post updates on our Twitter account, where you can follow us via text messaging on your mobile phone.

Thavius Beck Headlines a Night of Black Electronica

2009-04-03T17:51:34-04:00

Composer of mercurial soundtracks for uncertain times, Thavius Beck conjoins various strains of electronic music to arrive at a daringly ambitious sound. He'll be joining a lineup of local artists to celebrate black electronic music and benefit KBOO on April 3rd at Holocene in Portland, Oregon. Read more here.

Mr. Beck has received recognition in The Wire, Spin, and Urb for his solo releases under the moniker Adlib, the Labwaste project with fellow LA artist Subtitle, his recent production for fellow Mush artist K-The-I???, his early work with Global Phlowtations, numerous guest appearances, and producing for and touring in support of and accompanying Saul Williams. An exceptional programmer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist, Thavius Beck’s many talents allow him to take a song from idea to completion without ever having to leave his cluttered studio.

Also appearing:

Rasheeda Amera-
Experimental Soulstress, has worked with Nico Luminous, Mic Crenshaw, and Hungry Mob. A wow factor for the Electrogals event at Holocene in April 2008. She mixes computerized beats with organic musical accomplianment for a dark sound with lighter influences.

Cheetah Finess
Cheetah Finess is a solo act created by the artist purely as a vehicle for artistic expression. She combines heavy beats with textural samples of voice, keys and sounds that layer into a rhythmic hypnotism.

AYAM
From L.A. this new arrival to Portland, is a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, and beat maker. Ayam co-wrote and performed two songs with Mic Holden on the Alpha Dog soundtrack; “Let’s Chill”, and “Never Give Up”. In addition, her voice can be heard on the main title of the entertainment news show “Made in Hollywood”, and the HBO Documentary, Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal. Ayam Music is the debut album released by her this year.

Celeste Carey
A community whip, with a long relationship with KBOO 90.7fm. Her show on KBOO “An Evening of Afrotainment” is a mix of electronic black music from all decades is a staple in the community. Always propelling forward with one eye behind her, she knows how to definitely rock a party.