(This feature / profile originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

The mediasphere is abuzz over America’s embrace of electronic dance music. The signs are all around us. Nü-metal lunkheads rage to brostep. Billboard dance pop sounds like Euro-trance. Snoop’s SoundCloud page even boasts a track titled “Tekno Euro Mixx.” If you’re a trend gawker, these stories make for great pop-culture gossip. But the music associated with them is, to paraphrase those great polemicists the Gnostics, a waterless canal. I mean, have you heard Skrillex?

Nevertheless, our country’s current fascination with EDM is very real. Numerous are the musicians who nowadays have their ears tilted toward techno, house, and beyond. But to find its truly interesting outgrowths, it’s best to navigate away from the mainstream and poke around its myriad feeder streams and concealed tributaries—where the bandwagon vagaries of commercial pop give way to more sustainable visions of genre fusion and cross-pollination.

One of the more vital examples is based right here in Seattle: Further Records, established in 2009 by Eastsiders Chloe Harris and Mark Cul. Not unlike fellow imprints Spectrum Spools and Type, the Further aesthetic mirrors its founders’ disparate roots in everything from techno and house to post-punk and industrial music. For them, label curation is a means of erasing borders and transcending boundaries. Consequently, they don’t totally subscribe to the “EDM is conquering America” meme; it’s too one-sided. “I think people are just more eager and ready to explore different sounds than they are used to,” Harris counters. “It definitely helps that scenes are colliding, with musicians coming from all sorts of backgrounds.”

A longtime DJ (often under the moniker Raica), Harris used to spin on Groovetech, the now-defunct local Internet radio station. Visiting London in the early 2000s, she met Cul, a hard-core record nerd obsessed with the dub techno styles of Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, and Rhythm & Sound.

Shortly after relocating to Seattle, Cul had a chance encounter with drone metal that cracked open his skull. “I was in Zion’s Gate Records in 2003,” he explains in a thick English accent suffused with enthusiasm. “They were playing Sunn O))), with those extra-low frequencies. I was like, ‘Holy fuck, what is this?’ So I started to get into that stuff. Then I saw the way Brad Rose at Digitalis Recordings would allow noise and weird electronic musicians to express themselves in the tape realm. That kind of freedom didn’t seem to happen much in house and techno. There wasn’t that sort of avenue. At the time, things were much more regimented by BPM and the dance floor.”

The aftershocks of Cul’s epiphany ripple through the Further Records catalog, a swiftly expanding mishmash of wax, cassettes, and compact discs that serves as a bridge linking the raw and freewheeling nature of American experimental music with the tightly focused propulsion endemic to cutting-edge techno. Hieroglyphic Being’s The Urantia Project and Ekoplekz’s Live at Dubloaded, released last year, are telling reflections of this trajectory: The former’s radical throb falls between the jarring technoise of Container and Detroit badass Omar-S, while the latter melts post-dubstep something-or-other into nihilistically squelching goop.

Another excellent example is Donato Dozzy’s K. Cul and Harris approached the Italian techno producer to create a record that specifically embodied their label’s aesthetic. What they got was an arresting fusion of dubby beats and reverb-soaked atmospherics—softly purring ambient meditations that can be enjoyed by both fans of club music and the post-Emeralds synthesizer movement.

Further accentuating this sublime synthesis is the cleverly sympathetic packaging. The cover, fax-like smears of green and black, resembles the kind of DIY abstractions usually associated with noise cassettes (K was, naturally, released in that format as well). The couple applied the same aesthetic to John Daly’s Sea Level: Though released on vinyl only, its outer sleeve of garishly psychedelic neon totally flies in the face of techno’s love for ultra-tidy modern design.

“We sit down and think about how we can make it not look like a dance-music cover,” admits Harris. “With John Daly’s trance record, we wanted just that—something you’d look at and find a hypnotic element to space out to while stoned. And I definitely think the hand-screen-printed covers add to the idea that it feels more indie and punk.”

Arguably Further’s highest-profile release to date is Live ’72, a lovely double-LP gatefold compilation of early recordings of the late Conrad Schnitzler (who sadly passed away last August). At first blush, an archival document from one of the pioneers of Kosmische Musik and ambient music might seem like an oddity for a label so intensely focused on present sounds. Yet it’s quite fitting. If the numerous permutations of EDM and America’s underground electronic scene have a common ancestor, it surely is Schnitzler and the krautrock tradition he belongs to.

“Conrad was one of the most inspiring people we’ve ever encountered, and his passion for tape was unparalleled,” says Harris. “If there is anyone out there techno people and everyone else should listen to, it’s him. He was wise beyond what we could dream, and he did it before all of us.”

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

Lights is a post-everything band from Brooklyn, one which tosses all that is hip and cool into a bowl and stirs until yummy goodness ensues. At the group’s core lies a love for vintage FM rock. Vocalists Linnea Vedder and Sophia Knapp often sound like the teenaged offspring of Heart’s Wilson sisters (or maybe even the unknown mamas in Anonymous/J. Rider). But on Rites, Lights’ debut full-length for Drag City, the band tricks-out the rock with touches of post-punk, dub and funk. At times, Lights even dives mind-first into an arty free-bop that’s vaguely reminiscent of fellow New Yorkers Telepathe and Rings. However, the band is always mindful to return to what it knows best: riffs, jams and soaring harmonies.

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

As far as band names go, Papercuts isn’t my cup of tea — way too precious. But that doesn’t really matter, because San Francisco’s Jason Robert Quever, who is Papercuts, has just delivered one killer album. The Gnomonsong-released You Can Have What You Want is one of the better indie pop records I’ve heard in recent years. Now Quever isn’t lo-fi and bizarre like Ariel Pink and Kurt Vile, yet he shares with those two oddballs’ ability to drown listeners in moody, dreamy sounds dotted with classic hooks nicked from bubblegum, proto-punk, Brill Building, psychedelia… you name it. Quever is also a member of the fantastic Skygreen Leopards, who are dropping a new album of their own this July. So yeah, this dude basically bleeds perfect pop music 24/7.

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

If you study the recent history of California underground rock, say the last 15 years, you’ll spot these four trends: 1) arty farty post-hardcore in all its many guises, from Gravity Records to Total Shutdown and the Locust; 2) the hard psych renaissance spearheaded by Comets on Fire and including megaton jammers Mammatus and Residual Echoes; 3) Zach Hill’s freak rock cottage industry – ’nuff said; and 4) vintage lo-fi madness a la No Age and Wavves. Fusing all this stuff into a pan-Californian aesthetic is why Crystal Antlers is wicked-sweet. Plus, the Long Beach outfit writes some wonderfully thrashy pop. When you get the chance, sample the anthem “Dust,” off Tentacles, the Antlers’ debut full-length, released on Tough & Go. Another chestnut is “Andrew.” It unloads some really sharp hooks.

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

New York’s White Magic isn’t prolific, but the band sure is ambitious. Over the last five years, the duo of Mira Billotte and Douglas Shaw (plus a revolving cast of extras) has been researching different ways to fuse moody acid folk, Kate Bush-inspired art pop, gothic country and the trance-inducing exotica of their pals Gang Gang Dance. Sometimes they succeed; other times they don’t. Yet the results are always worth investigating, especially in a live setting. Your typical White Magic set might open with delicately picked acoustic guitars floating about Billotte’s deep, mournful wail and end in a psychedelic wash of quasi-Eastern melodies, looped grooves and shimmering piano. Then again, what’s typical for a band that’s touring the United States for the first time since 2007?

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

Let’s rank the top five coolest lo-fi rockers of the last, say, five years: 1) Ariel Pink 2) Kurt Vile 3) Sic Alps 4) Pink Reason and 5) Wavves. It’s a real toss up between Pink and Vile — both are just great. But Ariel is a bit more psychedelic in a Skip Spence/psychotic kind of way. Plus, his tune “West Coast Calamities,” off 2005’s House Arrest, contains one of the most audacious lines in recent memory: “I want a chick who puts up with my shit and puts out.” Probably the best thing about Pink is how he’s turned into a touring juggernaut. A lot of lo-fi studs suck at live shows, but not this guy. His band Haunted Graffiti are serious punch-the-clock rockers — kind of like the Cruisers, only different.

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

It’s damn near difficult not to froth at the mouth when discussing Philly’s Kurt Vile. Along with Ariel Pink and Kevin Debroux (a.k.a. Pink Reason), he’s the best of indie rock’s recent lo-fi/bedroom recordings revival. There’s good reason for this: beneath all the arty shenanigans (four-track crud, vintage drum machines, synthed-out shoegaze dreaminess) lurks a classic pop-rock songwriter and lyricist. Track down a copy of his album Constant Hitmaker, and I guarantee you won’t make it pass the opening anthem “Freeway” for, like, the first two weeks. It’s perfect the way “Tractor Rape Chain,” “Jessie’s Girl” and “Hey Tonight” are all perfect. Of course, comparing Vile to Pollard and Fogerty (but not Springfield) is some kind of artist’s kiss of death. But fuck it. The dude just might be that good.

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

Hank IV are five old farts from ‘Frisco who worship uranium-soaked scuzz punk and vintage retard rock. If you’re the type of smelly goon who gets all hard for Ron House, Hickey, Sockeye and Gaunt, these are the bastards for you. In October, Siltbreeze Records released the Hanks’ second album, the bitching Refuge in Genre. It proves you can be a party hard degenerate and still play super-tight, super-catchy rock and roll with efficiency and skill. The band’s pedigree, by the way, is aces. Howler Bob McDonald served time in Denver’s Bum Kon; they once recorded a single titled Drunken Sex Sucks. Guitarist Anthony Bedard, meanwhile, used to molest the drums in the legendary Icky Boyfriends. Track down the tune “Vicious Dick” when you get a chance — it’s fun.

(This feature originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

Over the past 25 years, the Seattle-based Sun City Girls and their myriad side projects have evolved into America’s most influential underground enterprise. Along with the Ex, those anarchic punks from the Netherlands, they’ve exposed an entire generation of kids to non-Western music and avant-garde sounds, laying the foundation for a new indie rock that’s as informed by field recordings, global pop, and free improv as it is by Dinosaur Jr. and Galaxie 500. Bands like Animal Collective, Deerhoof, Abe Vigoda, Xiu Xiu, Vampire Weekend, and Neung Phak are all in some way in debt to the SCG universe. Plus there’s the growing number of labels clearly inspired by the pan-global aesthetic of both Abduction and Sublime Frequencies, the two imprints associated with the Sun City Girls.

At 44, Steve Tobin is a bit older than all those hip freaks spinning Torch of the Mystics for the very first time. The head of Fire Museum Records actually remembers the mid-’80s, when the Sun City Girls, the Ex, and lesser-knowns like Savage Republic grew tired of punk and hardcore and drifted into world music, jazz, and post-industrial noise.

“As hardcore became more and more predominant, things became less and less interesting,” says Tobin, phoning from his Philadelphia pad, where he’s planted in front of a tiny air conditioner struggling to keep him cool. “One of the things I got into was free jazz. The dollar bin at Tower Records was loaded with records from Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane. A lot of that stuff claimed to be based on Indian modality. And that’s how the entire world of non-Western music opened up for me.”

Because Tobin participated in post-hardcore’s first awakening to life beyond the American pasture, his Fire Museum imprint (www.museumfire.com) isn’t so much SCG’s offspring as a kind of younger brother. He even nixed the label’s second proposed release, a collage of field recordings made in India, when Sublime Frequencies, which mines a similar aesthetic, dropped its first release while Tobin was still in production. “I thought people would say we’re just trying to ride the same train, so I put it aside for a while,” says Tobin of Indian Sonic Omnibus, which finally came out this summer on Majmua Music, Fire Museum’s new specialty imprint.

Even if ISO had come out when it was supposed to, back in 2002, he would have had nothing to worry about. The Sun City Girls might’ve charted much of the terrain that Fire Museum now roams, but Tobin has built a unique catalog of obscure treasures which span traditional ethnomusicology, specialty reissues, and modern experimental music. The first release that tickled these ears was Madras 1974 from the Nathamuni Brothers, a south-Indian classical brass band that goes nearly as all-out as those awesome Ayler records Tobin found in that dollar bin. He acquired the archival recordings from Robert Garfias, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.

“We’re hoping to put out some recordings Garfias made in Burma in the 1970s,” explains Tobin, who dreams of exploring the southeast Asian country one of these days. “He got to stay in Burma in 1972 for an extended time, which was unheard of back then. Usually, people only got to stay in Burma for no more than two weeks. He’s got hours of recordings.”

Speaking of vintage jams, Fire Museum also dropped the first reissue of Alan Sondheim’s The Songs. The 1967 nugget, a spontaneously composed jazz opera that bubbles and shrieks for about 35 straight minutes, is something of a Holy Grail for noise dudes because it made Nurse with Wound’s list of obscure experimental classics, an insert that accompanied the industrial icon’s 1979 debut.

The old stuff is cool and all, but Fire Museum truly rocks when it’s documenting current sounds, namely those from Philadelphia and Finland, two locales that have become hotbeds for that new indie music I mentioned above. In addition to dropping the first record from Espers cellist Helena Espvall, Tobin has also hooked up with her hippie pals Buck and Shanti Curran from the wilds of Maine. Calling themselves Arborea, the duo filters hushed folk-blues through whimsical vibes clearly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons (or at the very least acoustic Zeppelin).

Even better is the mysterious Keijo Virtanen. He’s a Finnish axe-master who has one foot in his country’s experimental scene (Avarus, Kemialliset Ystävät, etc.) and the other, believe it or not, in Marin County circa 1971. Rhythm Kingz of Bushel Finland, Virtanen’s second and latest release for Fire Museum, takes Hot Tuna’s LSD-spiked country blues and gets it even higher. We’re talking stoners in flying saucers obsessed with Skip James and Robert Johnson.

Interestingly enough, Rhythm Kingz’s cracked folk isn’t all that different from the Sun City Girls’ latest tour, where the Bishop brothers paid tribute to their late drummer Charles Gocher by reimagining their entire oeuvre as modern alternative folk. So yeah, we’ve come full circle.

(This show preview originally appeared in the Seattle Weekly.)

This is going to be a special gig. First off, it’s the Juan MacLean’s first tour in nearly five years. For somebody so vital to the current indie-electro-whatever scene, that’s a long time to stay out of the clubs. More exciting, however, is MacLean’s decision to enlist the DFA house band, the same ensemble that routinely backs LCD Soundsystem and Hercules and Love Affair. When it comes to experimenting with live musicians and electronic dance music, the dude has few equals. Before hooking up with the DFA crowd, MacLean played guitar in Six Finger Satellite. Back in the ’90s, no one knew what to make of the group. But nowadays their fusion of post-punk, industrial, new wave and krautrock feels like the most prescient idea ever conceived. Whatever this guy has in store is not to be missed.